Scarlett Johansson hit out at OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman after the artificial intelligence start-up programmed its chatbot with an “eerily similar” voice to the actor’s own without her permission.
“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine,” Johansson wrote in a statement on Monday, which was published by NPR.
A dispute with the Hollywood star adds to the mounting set of concerns for Altman, as scrutiny of the $86bn start-up intensifies. OpenAI has set the pace among AI start-ups and Big Tech companies such as Google and Microsoft in developing cutting-edge tools capable of generating responses to a huge range of human input with audio, text or images.