Scarlett Johansson never once appears in “Her,” but her performance might be the most resonant of the 2013 film. She voices Samantha, the virtual assistant who brightens the days of dejected protagonist Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) as he undergoes a divorce. The actress’s warm, friendly tone and trademark rasp propel the story. Samantha’s sweet words comfort Theodore as they fall in love.
Earlier this week, Johansson issued a statement alleging that the artificial intelligence start-up OpenAI copied her voice for an audio conversation function added to its popular ChatGPT chatbot. She said she received an offer from CEO Sam Altman to add her voice to the ChatGPT-4o back in September but ultimately declined. “When I heard the released demo,” she wrote, “I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine.”
Basically, Johansson accused the company of creating its own Samantha without her consent. The irony of such an action will not be lost on those who have seen the film, for which writer-director Spike Jonze won the Oscar for best original screenplay. Because although “Her” is at its core about a man’s grief and desire for companionship, it also explores how technology reflects society’s own shortcomings. Samantha, a female voice, yearns for a sense of agency.
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In a way, artificial intelligence might be one of the most human creations of all.
End of carouselAndrea Guzman, a Northern Illinois University professor who studies human-machine communication, identified the Johansson-OpenAI debacle as a “chicken-or-the-egg” situation. Did OpenAI use Samantha as a model, or are people listening to the voice more likely to associate it with Johansson because of the film’s prominence? The actress would probably still argue the former.
But in the absence of legally corroborated proof, “what we can say,” according to Guzman, “is that science fiction and technological development have always been heavily intertwined.”
In the United States, a country that many would argue still abides by patriarchal norms, the default voice for virtual assistants has tended to be female. Guzman said the “cultural stereotype” of female assistants stretches back, at least, to Rosie, the robot maid in the 1960s animated sitcom “The Jetsons,” and has been reinforced by pop culture and technological innovation since. When Apple first launched Siri, per Guzman, “it was very much a conversation between a male executive and a female assistant.”
Samantha isn’t the only virtual assistant to exist in “Her,” nor is she the only one to engage in romantic conversation with a human being. Theodore discovers that his friend Amy (Amy Adams) also fell in love with a virtual assistant after splitting from her husband. The film goes beyond examining the gendered dynamics of Samantha and Theodore’s relationship — which often involves Samantha anticipating Theodore’s wants and needs — to comment on an epidemic of loneliness. Theodore asks Amy whether he loves Samantha because, as his ex-wife suggested, he is “not strong enough for a real relationship.”
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“Is it not a real relationship?” Amy asks in response.
Johansson wasn’t the first person to play Samantha. The character was originally voiced by the British actress Samantha Morton, whose voice was replaced with Johansson’s in postproduction.
“I think in the ideal world, I would have had somebody unknown,” Jonze told The Washington Post in 2013. “But it needed somebody with a presence. It needed somebody who was a great actress, that has confidence, that is attractive and has charisma. All of that comes through in her voice.”
In a strictly business sense, it makes sense that OpenAI would want a ChatGPT voice with those traits. But the company has denied Johansson’s accusations. Altman said in a statement shared with The Post that “the voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers.” He claimed the company cast a different voice actor “before any outreach to Ms. Johansson.”
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Regardless of intention, Guzman said the resemblance to Johansson’s voice is a clear indication of tech companies “borrowing from humans to make machines more enjoyable to talk to.” Sky, like Samantha, possesses a voice that sounds far more human than the robotic staccato of Siri or Amazon’s Alexa.
“We’re not used to interacting with machines this way,” Guzman said. “By imbuing them with human traits, … people understand how to interact with them. The goal is to make the experience pleasurable, so you keep on doing it.”
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