Article 6NVAW OpenAI Delays Sky, Its New AI Voice That Resembles Scarlett Johansson, Over Safety Concerns

OpenAI Delays Sky, Its New AI Voice That Resembles Scarlett Johansson, Over Safety Concerns

by
Krishi Chowdhary
from Techreport on (#6NVAW)
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  • OpenAI announced that the launch of a new voice for ChatGPT called Sky has been delayed over security concerns.
  • The controversy arose from the fact that it sounded a lot like the voice of Scarlett Johansson in the movie Her" where she played an AI assistant.
  • OpenAI only said it's training the voice to be able to refuse certain requests if they go against company policy.

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OpenAI announced that the release of a voice called Sky, which sparked controversy last month, has been delayed and OpenAI fans are not happy about it.

Last month at an event, OpenAI released a bunch of new voices for ChatGPT, and one of them sounded dangerously similar to the voice of Scarlett Johansson in the movie Her" where she played an AI assistant.

Apart from the voice resemblance, its flirty nature also resulted in a lot of controversy. Things got so bad that at one point the company decided to remove the voice.

However, it looks like OpenAI has moved past those hesitations and is still planning to release it, but with a delay over some safety concerns. Apparently, the voice needs to go through a little more testing.

What Is the Safety Concern?

OpenAI hasn't revealed much about its plans for the voice but it did mention programming it to refuse certain requests. If this is the case, it's nothing new.

Given that Sky" was a little flirty during the demo, it's more at risk of being misused.

Certain users with ill intentions are known to ask controversial questions to AI chatbots or trick them into saying something offensive. Even if it's the user's fault, at the end of the day it will be ChatGPT that will be criticized online if something of this nature happens.

It is also reported that the infrastructure supporting the tool is not ready yet to handle millions of users and their queries.

As part of our iterative deployment strategy, we'll start the alpha with a small group of users to gather feedback and expand based on what we learn' - OpenAI

The exact release date is yet to be announced. But it is expected that by July, it will start testing the voice with the small group and probably by fall, every user will have access to it.

A Stunt Gone Wrong

On the flip side, it is totally possible that this update' is just an excuse to keep Sky off the blocks for some time. Scarlett Johansson was clearly not happy with OpenAI after this and threatened to take legal action against them. And she has good evidence that connects the dots.

Sam Altman reached Scarlett around 9 months ago to seek her permission to use her voice for an AI assistant. But, she declined for personal reasons. Even a day before the launch, the OpenAI team tried reaching Scarlett, which was met with no response.

Even after being denied, Sam launched Sky anyway. But people were quick to notice the uncanny resemblance between Sky and Scarlett. OpenAI tried to shrug it off as a coincidence and assured no foul play. But it's not difficult to see through what's going on here.

OpenAI did try to do a patch-up job and released a lengthy blog explaining how the actors behind the voice were chosen. Sam Altman said that they had cast the voice actor behind Sky before reaching out to Ms. Johansson.

This only goes to show that Sam was well aware of what he was doing. He knew that the voice resembled Scarlett's and tried to rope her in for an official collaboration. But that didn't work out

OpenAI has since removed Sky from ChatGPT Out of respect for Ms. Johansson". However, if they did want to respect' her. the voice wouldn't have been released in the first place.

OpenAI Users' Reaction

However, OpenAI fans who had been ardently waiting for the new voice are not happy with the news. Some of them even feel cheated because they paid for the ChatGPT Plus subscription believing that the new voice will roll out within a few weeks. Others are mocking its failure in keeping its promise and delivering the products on time.

The timing of this news is especially bad because its rival Anthropic has just released a new update to its chatbot Claude, now Claude 3.5.

This is not a good look for OpenAI. The competition in the industry is way too fierce to make such mistakes. One wrong move and other rivals will crush it under their feed and race ahead.

The post OpenAI Delays Sky, Its New AI Voice That Resembles Scarlett Johansson, Over Safety Concerns appeared first on The Tech Report.

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