OpenAI Fail

I hate Artificial Intelligence. I put it right up there with ketchup on hotdogs, spammers, robocalls, Nickelback, Kars-4-Kids commercials, pineapple pizza, the anonymous cartoonist, Ted Nugent, cartoonists who tracer, cartoonists who only draw a caricature once and then copy and paste it for the rest of their careers, anyhoo, people who use their speakerphone in public, car warranty commercials, gutter filter commercials, Fast and Furious movies, Facebook bots posing as beautiful women commenting on your post asking for a friend request, a bottle of coke that explodes when you open it while trying to write a blog on a train making your hand all sticky and nasty, memes, gullible fuckers who fall for fake quotes on the internet because it’s more convenient to believe bullshit than do a little research, plagiarists, trolls, slow walkers in Union Station, people who wear facemasks but leave their noses uncovered thus defeating the purpose, double kicks on bass drums, having to walk through cigarette smoke, missing items in an Uber order, people who whistle, Republicans, sycophants, cultists, conspiracy theorists, MAGAts, and Donald Trump. I know I left something out.

I did leave something out. People, including my colleagues who oppose AI yet share AI-created images.

AI is unethical. It’s built upon what humans create, such as artists. If you create an image using AI, you’re using stolen artwork. Each time you create something with AI, you’re teaching it to be better at stealing art and to be more human-like. Last week, I saw someone on Facebook refer to themselves as an “AI artist.” If I could virtually slap a person on the internet, I’d slap that one. A person stealing stolen artwork and referring to themselves as an “artist” is almost as bad as a DJ who refers to himself as a musician. That’s another on my list. DJs!

Now, AI is even stealing voices. Scarlett Johansson wants OpenAI to tell her why ChatGPT’s new personal assistant, Sky, has her voice. It seems that people who created AI aren’t any more ethical than the people using it. This isn’t new. The actress who provided the original voice for Siri back in 2005 still has not been paid by Apple.

OpenAI CEO Am Altmann has said the 2013 Spike Jonze film Her, starring Scarlett Johansson, is his favorite movie and invited comparisons by posting “her” on Twitter/X when announcing the new ChatGPT assistant, but then other executives denied any connections between the new voice assistant and ScarJo.

Now, the company has dropped the voice. OpenAI said the voice would be halted as it addresses “questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT.” Yes, how did you choose to copy that particular voice? I get it. ScarJo voiced the snake in The Jungle Book and she made that one sexy snake.

Altman approached Johansson months ago about being the voice for ChatGPT and she declined. Now she says she feels betrayed. She was. Altman tried to change her mind and before she could give him a reply, the new voice for ChatGPT was out.

She said, “I was shocked, angered, and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.”

“In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity.”

Altman denies any connections to Johansson’s voice, saying in a statement to NPR, “We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”

Altman wanted people to compare Sky to Johansson’s voice and now wants us to believe there’s no connection. Humans teach Artificial Intelligence, but now the people behind AI are conditioning us to accept lies and eschew all ethics.

People believe if they find it on the internet, from cartoons to music to voices to images and even to porn, then it’s free. When someone copy and paste one of my cartoons to his Facebook page, he’s conditioned to believe he didn’t steal it. Some people have told me to be thankful that someone wants to steal my cartoon.

This is how Skynet begins.

Creative note: I drew this at Soho Tea & Coffee on P Street in Washington, DC. It’s my favorite coffee shop in the city although they don’t bring your order to your table, even if you tip. This blog was written on an Amtrak train in the dining car that has a bathroom that’s going to give me nightmares.

Music Note: I listened to Cake.

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