How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

Am I the only one that really dislikes these overly perky voices? And the one they used for the demo was GOD AWFUL. If this is what the future sounds like… idk. I was hoping for a calm, neutral and not eager assistant with a little class. A little Jarvis maybe? Something calm and easy on the ears.<p>These all sounded to me like people auditioning for a role in film and television or something.

None of the voices really seem that good to me. I think it&#x27;s because they&#x27;re all aggressively American. It would be nice to hear some other accents.

As a British person, I find all the current OpenAI voices have overly strong (American) accents, which are way too perky&#x2F;enthusiastic for my ears. It would be great if they could offer a more neutral accent, or even one British accent? (Example: Voice 5 from pi.ai is excellent, IMHO)

Berlin famously casted a gender neutral voice for public transport announcements. It would be nice if OpenAI would have done that too. At least for one of the options. Computers better not have genders imo

Article doesn’t address the ridiculously giggly female voice they used for the 4o demos.

&gt; We support the creative community<p>I doubt the net result is support. Expanding creative community - yes. But support - not quite; established creators will likely suffer because of openai, most of them already having a harder time.

Sky has an uncomfortably flirty tone to me. If they&#x27;re going to go that route, at least include an uncomfortably flirty male voice too. (Or admit Sky is there more for the enjoyment of straight male users than anything else)

&gt; We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity&#x27;s distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.<p>I love how they have to go out of their way to explain that, rather than train a model on Scarlett Johansson&#x27;s voice, they came about her voice honestly, by just finding someone who&#x27;s natural voice sounded the most like Scarlett Johansson... as, clearly, no one is questioning that this voice was chosen to mimic Scarlett Johansson.

From their Discord server: &gt; @ everyone We’ve heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky. We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them. Read more about how we chose these voices [link above, but no further details]

Would it be possible to use prompting to change aspects of the voice output? Will the voice respond angrily if you ask to act an angry character in a play?

I can&#x27;t help but read this as:<p>&gt; 400 people did some unpaid work for us, only 5 of which eventually got paid, after 5 months of not knowing will they or won&#x27;t they.<p>Fair enough, that&#x27;s how things work for other voice acting jobs as well, I just doubt it usually takes almost half a year. I wonder how many of the shortlisted 14 have just given up somewhere along the way.