If AI doesn’t pan out, Sam Altman might have a second stint in his future. The CEO of OpenAI has made quite a few enemies for himself as the head of the world leader in generative AI, including (briefly) his own board and none other than A-list actress Scarlett Johansson. The latter, known for her decade-long stint as Marvel hero the Black Widow, figures Altman could fit into the universe.
When asked by The New York Times' Maureen Dowd if Altman would make a good villain, she said, "I guess he would — maybe with a robotic arm.” Johansson’s comments regarding Altman come against the backdrop of a contentious relationship between the two figures, surrounding the alleged nonconsensual usage of her image.
In May, Altman’s company released its latest generative AI model called GPT-4o, which came with a setting named Sky that Johansson said sounded “eerily similar” to her voice. That same day, Altman tweeted “her,” which many saw as a reference to Johansson’s role as an AI operating system in the 2013 Spike Jonze movie, “Her.” Altman was seemingly planting seeds for the Twilight Zone scenario earlier in the year: According to Johansson, the CEO reached out to her last September to be a voice actress for ChatGPT. Neither Altman nor Johannson’s representatives responded to requests for comments.
Johansson mentioned in her tweeted statement that she was feeling emotions of shock, anger, and disbelief that after declining the proposal, Altman would use a voice so close to her own that “friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.” Altman apparently approached her again two days before the demo was launched. He claimed in a statement to Fortune this spring that Sky was not Johansson’s voice nor was it “intended to resemble hers.” Either way, Sky has since been taken down.
The incident left the actor with a bad taste in her mouth about what’s coming. “It’s like this dark wormhole you can never climb your way out of,” she told Dowd of this world. “Once you try to take something down in one area, it pops up somewhere else.”
Mentioning that other countries that have “different legislations and rules,” she said someone’s “whole life can be completely ruined” by instances like revenge deep fake porn. Johansson told Dowd she “had actively avoided being part of the conversation,” and expressed feeling anger about getting “wrapped up” in the debacle. But it seems like Johansson has been thrust into the role of advocate for AI regulation by nature of this incident, as members of Congress called upon her to testify before the panel on cybersecurity this past June.
Indeed, stars and Silicon Valley figures have squared off when it comes to AI. Without regulations in place, Hollywood stands to be threatened by this new wave of technology. The mounting issue was a focal point during last year’s Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) strikes. Everyone between Nicolas Cage and Ashton Kutcher has sounded off on AI’s potential influence on the arts. Owning your own physical or audio likeness has become a striking issue. And of course with sex symbols, it becomes more of a crisis, as people considered objects of the gaze already struggle to control their own image.
It’s all led to creepy crawly sci-fi moments like Sydney Sweeny having to react live to a demo of Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked replicating her face—and Johansson before her, trying to pump the brakes on a reenactment of “Her.”
“I think technologies move faster than our fragile human egos can process it, and you see the effects all over, especially with young people. This technology is coming like a thousand-foot wave,” Johansson warned.
