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Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

This is the first I've heard of this, but I've used the "Sky" voice extensively and never once thought it sounded like Johansson. Has anyone else noticed a similarity? To me they sound pretty different, Johansson's voice is much more raspy.

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There's two different things: the Sky voice they launched last year, as heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcgV2u9Kxh0. The voice actor is the same, but the intonation is fairly flat.

They changed the voice to intone like Scarlett Johansson's character. It's like they changed the song the voice was singing to one that lots of people recognise.

Oh, interesting, I didn't know that, thank you. Do you have an example of the changed voice anywhere?

I don't think that's exactly accurate.

What's likely different is that GPT-4o can output the tonality instructions for text to speech now.

It's probably the same voice, but different instructions for generations. One was without tonal indicators, one with.

That's a big stretch. Allowing intonation to be copyrighted would be incredibly silly. The timeline and intention makes sense but this being "similar" would never win and it shouldn't. Sam should have kept his mouth shut.

Yes when the demos first came out I don't remember seeing anyone comparing the voice to Scarlett Johansson's. It seems to be a meme that's taken hold subsequently with the news about OpenAI trying to license her voice.

Have you seen the announcement? The voice is not 100% the same but the mannerisms and the flirty tone are spot on.

https://x.com/OpenAI/status/1790072174117613963

Looks like you're not the only one who thinks the voices don't sound similar:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40414908

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40414923

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40419791

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40414802

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40414902

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40414713

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40415350

Saw some other posters expressing this view who deleted their posts after getting downvoted, lol.

I mean, the first post you linked to explicitly says they do sound similar. The last one says they don’t know what Scarlets voice sounds like to begin with.

Bottom line anyone who watched the movie "Her" will make an immediate connection. Also does not help Sam Xed "her" the night before. Pretty much slam dunk case.

Anyone who watched the movie "Her" will make an immediate connection with any of the female voices. It's kind of the entire point of the film.

Yes, I feel gaslit by the whole situation

Yeah, very odd. Don't get me wrong, I'd absolutely love Johansson's voice on the thing, but Sky is not it.

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