Open-AI’s voice scandal sounds larger Than AI



OpenAI’s voice scandal
Open AI’s voice scandal sounds larger AI alarm

San Francisco: On May 13, Sam Altman posted one word on his X profile: "she." Word was released on Twitter by the CEO of Open AI (Open AI Voice Scandal Sounds Bigger AI Alarm) to announce the launch of the company's new multi-modal AI model, the GPT-4o, which can interact with humans by voice, camera and text. In a live webcast of the company's announcement the same day, one of the AI voices named "Sky" was charming and flirtatious in his answers, ready to please the companies he was talking to.

Skye's intonation and personality also sounded like the dark AI voice in the movie She, played by actress Scarlett Johansson. An iconic 2013 film from director Spike Jonze, Hair starred Johansson as an artificial intelligence personal assistant who forms a relationship with actor Joaquin Phoenix's lonely character. It is a tragic story about loneliness, love and human emotions. It's also a film that Altman repeatedly cites as one of his favorite interpretations of how AI can interact with humans. A week after the tweet, Johansson released a public statement accusing Open AI of knowingly copying her voice, without permission, to make the Sky AI model sound like her. 

She mentioned that Altman contacted her in September 2023 and then two days before the launch of the multimodal AI model to allow her voice, which she declined. "Sky's voice is not Scarlett Johansson's," Altman said in a counter-statement on May 20, adding that the company had chosen a voice actor for Sky before any contact with Johansson. Although Open AI has suspended the use of Sky, the damage has already been done.

Can AI give you compensation or credit?

For more than a decade, major technology companies have developed generative artificial intelligence by feeding these models with data from the World Wide Web, all collected without permission or consent. He then analyzes it and regurgitates logical and contextual answers. Most tech leaders, like Altman, want to see the culmination of this technology: an idea called Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, a machine that can react, communicate, learn and think like humans, trained on human-generated data. According to estimates by Market Sand Markets, a market research publisher, the projected size of the artificial intelligence market is expected to reach a whopping $407 billion by 2027. But today, these models regurgitate synthetic content without compensation, consent or credit to any of us. In favor of several corporations.

The issue of compensation is something that major media companies are already working on. Last year, media companies such as CNN, The New York Times and Reuters encrypted their platforms to prevent artificial intelligence bots from Open AI or Google from crawling their websites and learning from the content they create. The show of force has helped AI companies, always hungry for data, now partner with media companies to license their data for AI training. Recently, Open AI and NewsCorp signed a content agreement worth more than $250 million. Media organizations around the world could adopt this method to generate revenue from their content.

What the dispute between Johansson and Open AI has done is highlight how AI can use intellectual property, copyrighted material, and even impersonate individuals without permission, credit, or payment. If tech companies can so easily copy the cadence of a popular and beloved actress like Johansson, what chance do creative people have? Freelance bloggers, influencers, small mom and pop digital content shops who can't get SEO leads anymore but aren't big enough to sign with a tech company?

Consent is required for synthetic media

It doesn't help that AI technology is advancing much faster than policymakers can fathom. We are already in the new era of multimodal artificial intelligence. These tools can recreate anyone's voice or video in minutes. With two minutes of audio of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for example, you can recreate his synthetic voice in any language saying anything. While the potential for digital identity theft, financial fraud and fraud has just increased, synthetic media also threaten personal privacy and consent.

Shweta Taneja is an author and journalist based in the Bay Area.

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