Featured Image Credit: Paolo Blocco/FilmMagic/Getty Images/Paul Morigi/Getty Images
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Celebrity, Scarlett Johansson, Technology, TV and Film
Joe Harker
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Celebrity, Scarlett Johansson, Technology, TV and Film
She's been in lots of iconic roles over her career but there's one job in particular that Scarlett Johansson turned down as she 'felt it went against my core values'.
For many years, she's made regular appearances in the MCU as Black Widow, then she got thrown off a cliff and died only to get her standalone Black Widow movie afterwards.
Elsewhere in her career she's resisted the Nazi's in Jojo Rabbit, has been the other Boleyn girl in The Other Boleyn Girl and got into the weird world of Wes Anderson in Asteroid City.
However, there's one part she was offered recently which she absolutely didn't want to do for a few reasons, including it going against her values and thinking 'it would be strange' for her children.
Advert
It all started when she was approached to be the voice of OpenAI, a chatbot for the ChatGPT system.
It might have been a bit of an allusion to Johansson's role in the movie Her, where she plays an AI who gradually develops into more of an individual with her own thoughts and desires.
Johansson told the New York Times she'd been approached by OpenAI boss Sam Altman with the job offer but she'd turned down the offer.
She said: “I felt I did not want to be at the forefront of that, I just felt it went against my core values.
Advert
"I don’t like to kiss and tell. He came to me with this and I didn’t tell anybody except my husband.
"I also felt for my children it would be strange. I try to be mindful of them."
OpenAI then launched their chatbot, named 'Sky', and the Marriage Story star was bombarded by messages from people saying they thought it sounded like her.
As part of the launch, Altman had posted the word 'her' onto social media and lots of people drew a link to Johansson, prompting her to release a statement where she said she 'was shocked, angered and in disbelief'.
Advert
Scarlett continued by saying that the OpenAI voice was 'so eerily similar to mine'.
She would later tell the NYT that her attempts to not be part of this and then being drawn into it 'was what made it so disturbing'.
In a statement from Altman he said that the voice for 'Sky' had been done by someone else who had been cast 'before any outreach to Ms. Johansson', but apologised and paused the use of the AI chatbot's voice.