OpenAI's mistake was caving to SJ. They should have kept Sky and told SJ to get lost. If SJ sued, they could simply prove another voice actor was used and make the legitimate argument that SJ doesn't have a monopoly on voices similar to hers.
I think what’s going on here is that Scarlett is famous, and so media outlets will widely cover this. In other words, this latest incident hasn’t riled up people any more than usual — if you scan the comments, they’re not much different from how people already felt about OpenAI. But now there’s an excuse for everybody to voice their opinions simultaneously.
They’re acting like the company literally stole something.
It also didn’t help that OpenAI removed the Sky voice. Why would they do that unless they have something to hide? The answer of course is that Scarlett is famously rich, and a famously rich person can wage a famously expensive lawsuit against OpenAI, even if there’s no basis. But OpenAI should’ve paid the cost. Now it just looks like their hand was caught in some kind of cookie jar, even though no one can say precisely what kind of cookies were being stolen.