May 23 (Reuters) - OpenAI's apparent homage to the movie

"Her" featuring the voice likeness of Scarlett Johansson is

fueling a backlash against artificial intelligence across

Hollywood, executives told Reuters.

Johansson's accusation that the ChatGPT-maker copied her

performance in the Spike Jonze-directed feature film, after

failing to strike an agreement, rekindled the creative class's

anxiety about the existential threat posed by AI, even as

Hollywood studios test new tools and mull alliances with OpenAI.

"This seemed to strike a real chord," said one industry

executive. "It kind of puts a human face on it ... There's a

well-known tech company that did something to a person we know."

OpenAI stunned the world in February with feature film-like

quality videos generated by its text-to-video tool, Sora. Since

then, Hollywood executives and agents have met the company

multiple times to discuss potential creative partnerships and

applications of the technology, according to agents and industry

executives.

Johansson's blasting of OpenAI for using a sultry voice she

called "eerily similar" to her performance in its public

demonstrations of the newest version of ChatGPT is antagonizing

some entertainment executives, amid discussions to work more

closely on projects, people with direct knowledge told Reuters.

"It sure doesn't set up a respectful collaboration between

content creators and tech giants," said one studio executive,

calling OpenAI's actions "hubris."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement Monday that the

voice "is not Scarlett Johansson's, and it was never intended to

resemble hers. We cast the voice actor behind Sky's voice before

any outreach to Ms. Johansson."

The company, whose largest investor is Microsoft ( MSFT ),

did not reply to requests for comment on its relationship with

Hollywood after the dispute.

Even before the latest conflict, agents and executives who

spoke with Reuters on condition of anonymity have said for weeks

they are concerned that OpenAI's models appear to have been

trained on copyrighted works, which the tech company deemed as a

fair use because they are publicly available on the internet.

That is seen as a major obstacle by some professional directors

and filmmakers, who may be reluctant to use a tool built,

without consent, on others' work.

But technologists in the entertainment industry view Sora as

a promising potential tool to augment the film- and TV-making

process. They see near-term applications for the technology to

accelerate the pace of digital effects.

Fox already uses OpenAI's ChatGPT to recommend new TV shows

and movies for viewers of its Tubi streaming service.

Although OpenAI has said it aims to protect copyrights -

blocking the ability to generate videos featuring known

characters like Superman or prominent actors like Jennifer

Aniston -- there remain concerns about how it will safeguard

lesser-known performers.

LOST VOICE

Johansson's conflict with OpenAI opens a new front in the

battle between the content industry and the AI leader. Johansson

has grounds to argue OpenAI violated her right to publicity,

which gives a person the right to control the commercial use of

his or her name, image or likeness, according to John Yanchunis,

a partner at law firm Morgan & Morgan.

Singer Bette Midler used California law to reclaim her own

voice in a case legal scholars point to as establishing a

precedent. She successfully sued Ford's advertising

agency, Young & Rubicam, for hiring a former backup singer to

imitate her rendition of "Do You Want to Dance?" in a car

commercial after she rejected an offer to perform the song. The

case, filed in 1987, rose to the Supreme Court, which upheld her

right of publicity. Tom Waits won a similar suit in 1988 against

Frito-Lay for a commercial featuring a performance imitating

Waits' gravelly singing style.

"In both of those cases, the sound-alikes were performing

songs that the singers had made famous, so people were likely to

assume that the artists were the ones singing and had endorsed

the products," said Mark Lemley, director of Stanford Program in

Law, Science and Technology.

The Johansson case is less clear-cut than the earlier cases,

though the effort to imitate Johansson's voice from "Her,"

together with Altman's repeated efforts to hire her and a tweet

by him referencing the film, make for "a pretty strong case for

Johansson," said Lemley.

Jeffrey Bennett, general counsel for the SAG-AFTRA

performers union, which was instrumental in establishing the

right of publicity in California and elsewhere around the

country, has been pressing for a federal right for voice and

likeness similar to the federal protections for a copyright.

"We're thrilled that there's now this huge dialogue about

it," Bennett said. "We've been trying to use the bullhorn and

shout about it for quite awhile now ... We've been talking about

the proliferation of 'deep fakes' and now it's going to start

impacting everybody. Now, it really is a conversation. There

must be a federal solution."