The voices of the A.I. tell us a lot

What does artificial intelligence look like? Hollywood has been imagining it for decades. Now, AI. developers take inspiration from movies, creating voices for real machines, based on outdated cinematic fantasies about how machines should speak.

Last month, OpenAI has revealed upgrades to its artificially intelligent chatbot. ChatGPT, the company said, taught people to hear, see and converse with a naturalistic voice — a voice that closely resembled the disembodied operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in Spike Jonze's 2013 film "Her."

ChatGPT's voice, called Sky, also had a raspy timbre, a calming effect and a sexy edge. She was pleasant and self-effacing; she looked like she was ready for anything. After Sky's debut, Johansson expressed her displeasure with the "eerily similar" sound and said she had previously declined OpenAI's request to voice the robot. The company protested that Sky was voiced by a "different professional actress", but agreed to pause her voice out of respect for Johansson. Bereft OpenAI users have started a petition to bring it back.