Scarlett Johansson advocates for AI regulation after voice and likeness misuse

Scarlett Johansson has continued to share her opinion on artificial intelligence — and she has some suggestions on how the technology should be regulated in the future.

During an interview with Vanity Fair, the actress spoke out about AI companies that have used her likeness and allegedly her voice in the past. She told the outlet that she is advocating for legislation to be made around evolving technology.

“There has to be some agreed-upon set of boundaries in order for [AI] to not be detrimental. I wish more people in the public eye would support and speak out about that — I don’t know why that’s not the case,” Johansson said.

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This is not the first time Johansson has warned about the dangers of AI. 

In 2024, Johansson claimed she had been asked to voice OpenAI’s Chatbot by CEO Sam Altman, but turned down the job, only for people to notice that the feature, named “Sky,” sounded almost exactly like the actress.

“There has to be some agreed-upon set of boundaries in order for [AI] to not be detrimental. I wish more people in the public eye would support and speak out about that — I don’t know why that’s not the case.”

— Scarlett Johansson

“Particularly with the A.I. piece. It was like: If that can happen to me, how are we going to protect ourselves from this? There’s no boundary here; we’re setting ourselves up to be taken advantage of,” the 40-year-old told InStyle Magazine in March.

In a statement to NPR following the release of “Sky,” Johansson 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. Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word ‘her’ — a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human.”

The “Black Widow” star’s legal team sent OpenAI letters asking for an explanation about how the AI assistant’s voice came to be, and the company later agreed to take down “Sky.”

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Altman later issued a statement to Fox News Digital regarding “Sky’s” voice.

“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. 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 statement read.

Speaking with InStyle, Johansson said she’s become a reluctant voice in the AI conversation, but won’t back down either. 

“I don’t need to be beating the drum the whole time. That’s not my place. But, also, I’m not afraid of being invalidated,” she said. 

Johansson added that after a Hollywood career that began as a child, she’s not shy about speaking up for herself.

“But now I see that I actually built something that… that I have a place here. And because of that, I’ve been able to stand up for myself and not feel like I would disappear. I can shoulder it,” she said.

The “Avengers” star also took legal action in 2023 against an AI image-generating app called Lisa AI: 90s Yearbook & Avatar for using her voice and likeness in an ad posted on X. 

Johansson’s attorney told Variety, “We do not take these things lightly. Per our usual course of action in these circumstances, we will deal with it with all legal remedies that we will have.”