This order is wrong according to the article, the VA was contracted before ever reaching out to SJ.g
Additionally here is a relevant anecdote, for instance, that may or may not change your mind?
>In a statement from the Sky actress provided by her agent, she wrote that at times the backlash “feels personal being that it’s just my natural voice and I’ve never been compared to her by the people who do know me closely.”
It would suck to be blacklisted from your career because your voice may sound too similar to another famous person, if viewed from a certain light.
Be that as it may, but it's clear that OpenAI had early on considered a her-like voice for their product. According to OpenAI, they started with over 400 candidate voices and narrowed them down to [1]. I find it would be quite the amazing if the one that sounded very close to the her voice was chosen purely by coincidence - and then they went:
- Wait a minute, you know what she sounds like? Have you ever seen that movie Her?
- Man, you're right, it does sound quite like that voice. Wasn't that Scarlett Johansson in the movie?
- Yeah, I think so.
- Whoa, whoa, tell you what: why don't we hire Scarlett Johansson directly?
- After we just went through 400 voices to select these five?
- So what? She's a star! Think of the marketing impact! "OpenAI has developed real-life her"
- Cool, dude! But what are the odds that Johansson would do that?
- I guess there's only one way to find out...
> Yeah, man, you're right. Let's do it!
I wonder if that was how it happened...
> It would suck to be blacklisted from your career
That's true. Is that's what's happening?
[1] https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-cho...