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Scarlett Johansson’s OpenAI Feud Makes Her an Uncanny Folk Hero

Scarlett Johansson’s talents once made her the ideal person to voice an AI. Now, she’s the perfect human to face off against it.

The terms weren’t disclosed, but the outcome was that Johansson proved she was not afraid of defending the worth of her work—whether against Disney, which had already paid her $20 million for the movie she made, or against OpenAI, which she threatened with legal action this week over its new conversational ChatGPT interface. As my colleague Brian Barrett pointed out last week, wanting to replicate that experience demonstrates a gross misreading of that film, but the fact remains that both tech honchos and those who live at their whims (aka everybody else) have parasocial relationships with Johansson because she has a skill set that AI just can’t learn. (Worth noting, perhaps: A Washington Post investigation published this week found that OpenAI made a casting call for a nonunion actress for the Sky voice months before contacting Johansson.)

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