Scarlett Johansson's AI Row Confirms Silicon Valley's Bad Culture

“Move fast and break things” is a motto that continues to haunt the tech sector, some 20 years after it was coined by a young Mark Zuckerberg.

Actress Scarlett Johansson claims that both she and her agent had declined for her to be the voice of its new product for ChatGPT, and then when it was unveiled, it sounded just like her anyway. I Photo: Gage Skidmore Flickr

Those five words came to symbolize Silicon Valley at its worst—a combination of ruthless ambition and a rather breathtaking arrogance—profit-driven innovation without fear of consequence, Zoe Kleinman, BBC News technology editor, wrote.

The phrase comes to mind this week when actress Scarlett Johansson clashed with OpenAI.

Johansson claimed both she and her agent had declined for her to be the voice of its new product for ChatGPT, and then when it was unveiled, it sounded just like her anyway.

OpenAI denies that it was an intentional imitation. It’s a classic illustration of exactly what the creative industries are so worried about—being mimicked and eventually replaced by artificial intelligence (AI).

There are echoes in all this of the macho Silicon Valley giants of old. Seeking forgiveness rather than permission as an unofficial business plan. The tech firms of 2024 are extremely keen to distance themselves from that reputation.

And OpenAI wasn’t shaped from that mold. It was originally a non-profit organization committed to investing any extra profits back into the business.

In 2019, when it formed a profit-making arm, the company said it would be led by the non-profit side, and there would be a cap on the returns for investors. Now, greed has taken over, and a wayward AI is trumping intellectual property rights (IPR) and human creativity and artistry.