May 20 - Scarlett Johansson on Monday accused OpenAI of

creating a voice for the ChatGPT system that sounded "eerily

similar" to the actress after she declined to voice the chatbot

herself.

Johansson made the comments in a statement released hours

after the artificial intelligence company said it was taking

down the voice, called 'Sky.'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement emailed to Reuters

on Monday that Sky's voice was not an imitation of Johansson,

but belonged to a different professional actress.

"The voice of Sky 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," Altman said.

"Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using

Sky's voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that

we didn't communicate better."

The fight over rights to actors' voices and images has

become a focus in Hollywood as studios consider how to use AI to

create new entertainment and as the computer-produced images and

sounds become difficult to distinguish from those of humans.

Johansson in the statement said Altman had approached her

last September and offered to hire her to voice a ChatGPT voice

-- an offer she declined.

"Nine months later, my friends, family and the general

public all noted how much the newest system named 'Sky' sounded

like me," she said.

"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 that my closest friends and news

outlets could not tell the difference."

Johansson added that Altman had "insinuated that the

similarity was intentional" by tweeting a reference to "her,"

the 2013 movie about a man who develops a relationship with an

AI assistant voiced by the actress.

Johansson's note was published by journalists from NPR and

other news outlets. Her publicist also shared it with Reuters.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment

after Johansson's statement. She said that she had hired legal

counsel to ask about the process of creating the voice.

OpenAI showed off its newest AI model, called GPT-4o, last

week, with audio capabilities that let users speak to the

chatbot and obtain real-time responses, marking a significant

advancement in more realistic sounding AI conversations.

(Additional reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal and Kanjyik Ghosh in

Bengaluru; writing by Peter Henderson; editing by Noel Randewich

and Sam Holmes)