Opinion: What we lose when ChatGPT sounds like Scarlett Johansson

Those who watched the live demo from OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, were quick to note that she sounded a whole lot like Samantha – which is to say, like Johansson. Murati told The Verge that the resemblance was incidental and that ChatGPT’s nascent speech capabilities have used this voice for a while. But once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. — Bloomberg

When Spike Jonze’s romance Her was released in 2013, it sounded both like a joke – a man falls in love with his computer – and a fantasy.

The iPhone was about six years old. Siri, the mildly reliable virtual assistant for that phone, came along a few years later. You could converse in a limited way with Siri, whose default female-coded voice had the timbre and tone of a self-assured middle-aged hotel concierge.