A week ago, OpenAI released an exciting new demo, featuring a voice character with a sexy breathy voice that was supposed to remind you of Scarlett Johansson’s AI agent character in the fabulous film Her. Lots of people gushed over it. (Some worried about the sexism, as well they should, but that’s a story for another day. And of course I daresay the demo was just a demo, one that will never work robustly as advertised, but that too is a story for another day.) (View Highlight)
Fast forward to today; there’s been a backlash. Too many people noticed the coincidence and not everyone was happy. Some wondered whether ScarJo had been compensated. Today, under pressure, OpenAI pulled the ScarJo-like voice, alleging that the resemblance was purely a coincidence. (View Highlight)
A couple hours later, ScarJo herself (via her publicist) sent a statement, even more damning, to Bobby Allyn, a journalist (that I happen to know) at NPR, telling the real story: (View Highlight)
They said it wasn’t intentional, but of course it was. Sam may not be wanting to delete his “her” tweet, but 6 million people saw it. And pur concidence line is a sign of consciousness of guilt. (View Highlight)
The (old, now-replaced) Board said in November they fired Sam because he was not consistently candid. I saw that with his fudges to the Senate about OpenAI equity (he has indirect equity, which he failed to mention, and owns an OpenAI VC firm that trades on the company name that he failed to mention), the board saw it with his lies about Helen Toner, and now we all see it with his embarrassing lies about Scarlett Johansson. (View Highlight)
