Scarlett Johansson

In 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow fought against an AI trying to wipe out humanity. This year, in real life, she launched into battle against OpenAI, becoming the most prominent public figure in a rising contingent voicing concerns about the company’s growth and safety tactics.

In May, Johansson claimed in a statement that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had personally reached out to her, asking her to voice the company’s new chatbot, ChatGPT-4o. After she turned down the offer, OpenAI released a voice that sounded so similar to hers, that her “closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference,” she wrote. In the statement, Johansson linked her personal feud with OpenAI to a larger one over the protection of peoples’ likeness and identities in a new era in which deepfakes are easily created and increasingly rampant. 

OpenAI responded that the voice was not inspired by Johansson, and was recorded by a different actor. But the company proceeded to pull the voice of the chatbot anyway. The backlash against the company was intense, with users accusing Altman of acting unethically, and of cutting corners in terms of permissions and copyright. In response to the incident, Senator Brian Schatz called for regulation, writing on Twitter: “The right to one’s own image and voice must be protected.” The following month, he co-introduced an AI “public awareness and education” bill, stressing the importance of teaching the public how to detect deepfakes.

*Disclosure: OpenAI and TIME have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI to access TIME's archives.

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