Let this be a lesson to one Sam Altman; if you’re going to try and pull something shady behind someone’s back after they very explicitly declined to work with you, make sure that that someone isn’t as lawsuit-savvy as Scarlett Johansson, because she will identify the holes in your scandalous enterprise and hold you as accountable as possible.
According to a recent statement shared by the Black Widow star’s publicist to NPR, Johansson revealed that “Sky”—an artificial intelligence system created by OpenAI for ChatGPT 4.0 whose voice was deliberately modeled after that of the actress’, and which has since been taken down—was created without her consent, having turned down the offer from Altman to voice the system last September. She noted that the tech CEO sought Johansson’s voice in order to help “bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI.”
But Sky was then pretty obviously developed with Johansson in mind anyway, with the rollout of Sky having been accompanied by a tweet from Altman that simply read “her” (a reference to the film Her, in which Scarlett Johansson voices an artificial intelligence that develops a relationship with a man). Moreover, Johansson’s agent was also contacted by Altman two days prior to Sky’s rollout, with the CEO hoping that the actress would reconsider; Sky was released to the public before the two ever reconnected.
With the help of legal counsel, Johansson confronted Altman and OpenAI, and Sky was eventually taken down. Johansson closed her statement with hopes for “resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”
And so now, OpenAI had better be ready to cooperate, lest they end up in a position where they would be wise to hit the big, red “settle” button as swiftly as possible. While the actress hasn’t sued OpenAI outright at the time of writing, she certainly has a surplus of legal/moral ammunition here, and especially given her clear passion for the situation at hand, it stands to reason that she has no qualms about using it if need be; her legal run-in with Disney proved that years ago.
In the summer of 2021, Johansson sued the Mouse House for breach of contract, noting that Black Widow — a Marvel Cinematic Universe feature film starring Johansson as the title character — was, according to the deal she signed with Disney, guaranteed to have an exclusive theatrical release. The film, however, was simultaneously released on Disney Plus along with its theatrical bow, gutting its box office potential and thereby negatively impacting Johansson’s payday in exchange for giving consumers a major reason to subscribe to the then-niche Disney Plus. That lawsuit was settled in September of that same year with undisclosed terms.
Indeed, put the shovel down, OpenAI; Johansson shoots demonstrably straight when it comes to lawsuits, and with all the proverbial bowling pins that Altman has set up for Johansson to knock down, you might find that “resolution in the form of transparency” and “appropriate legislation” isn’t so bad.