Los Angeles, May 21 (IANS) Actress Scarlett Johansson shared that she turned down OpenAI‘s request to lend her voice to ChatGPT system, and added that she was “shocked” and “angered” that the company went ahead and used a voice that sounded very similar to hers anyway.

Johansson said that her lawyers contacted OpenAI to have the voice of Sky, one of the new voices in the GPT-4o chatbot, pulled down, reports variety.com.

It was last week, when OpenAI introduced the Sky voice, which sounded very much like that of Johansson’s AI companion in Spike Jonze’s 2013 movie ‘Her’ in a demo of GPT-4o.

The company shared that it would “pause” the use of the Sky voice.

“We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’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,” a statement from OpenAI read.

Johansson said that she had been contacted by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in September 2023. She added that she declined for “personal reasons.”

“When I heard the released demo, 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,” Johansson said.

“Mr Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word ‘Her’ — a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human.”

Johansson called for legislation that would protect individuals from having their name, image or likeness misappropriated.

Another statement OpenAI from Altman read: “The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers. 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.”

The Johansson-soundalike ChatGPT voice was the basis of a joke on the season finale of ‘Saturday Night Live’ aimed at her husband, Colin Jost, co-host of Weekend Update.

–IANS

dc/kvd

Seoul, May 21 (IANS) Samsung Electronics announced on Tuesday it has appointed Jun Young-hyun as the new head of its semiconductor business in an apparent move to strengthen its market competitiveness.

Kyung Kye-hyun, who previously led the key unit of the world’s largest memory chip maker, will transition to the future business planning unit, according to the company.

Jun, who joined Samsung Electronics in 2000, has extensive experience in the semiconductor and battery sectors, reports Yonhap news agency.

After leading the development of DRAM and NAND flash memories in the chip division, he took over Samsung SDI Co. in 2017, helping the battery maker shift to the black in 2020 and become a major player in the global market.

“Jun was a key player in growing Samsung Electronics’ memory chip and battery businesses to the global level,” the company said in a statement. “We expect him to overcome the semiconductor crisis based on his rich management experience.”

Samsung Electronics’ chip business has struggled with sluggish sales for the past few years, logging an operating loss of over 15 trillion won (South Korean currency) last year.

It experienced five consecutive quarters of operating losses, from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the fourth quarter of 2023.

However, in the first quarter of 2024, the chip business rebounded to achieve an operating profit of 1.91 trillion won with 23.1 trillion won in sales, thanks to rising memory chip prices.

–IANS

na/uk

New Delhi, May 21 (IANS) The country has become the top innovator in the world in cutting-edge sectors like manufacturing, startups, digital public infrastructure (DPI), aerospace, space and defence in the last 10 years, and the next ‘techade’ will be even more exciting, top IT professionals, innovators, entrepreneurs and technocrats have stressed.

During an interaction with Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and Rajeev Chandrashekhar as part of ‘Vishesh Sampark Abhiyan,’ the innovators said initiatives such as Atal Innovation Mission, Start-up India, Stand-Up India and Digital India have resulted in the transformation of Indian economy.

Minister Puri said India’s economy, which was the 10th largest in the world in 2014, has become the 5th largest now and will soon become the third largest economy.

The number of unicorns has increased from four in 2015 to 130 in 2024, he informed.

Speaking at the event, Minister Chandrasekhar said the expansion of the footprint of the digital economy in the last decade is unprecedented and India has become the fastest-growing digital economy in the world.

“This government and their initiatives enabled a small-town boy like me to build something like Zomato, which employs lakhs of people today,” said Deepinder Goyal, CEO of the leading online food delivery platform.

Rajan Anandan, Head, of Peak XV, said that post the reforms of 2014, the number of active mobile phone data users in India has become more than 800 million, which is more than in the US and China combined.

“Because of the ecosystem provided by the government in the last 10 years, India has become the top innovator in cutting-edge sectors like aerospace, space and defence, which was unthinkable in the past,” Anandan noted.

Mamaearth Founder Varun Alagh said that it couldn’t have been possible but for the ecosystem provided by the PM Modi government to build a company from scratch.

In the next five years, said Alagh, the focus has to be on creating good jobs, producing quality and focusing on research.

Sunil Vachhani, Chairman of Dixon Technologies said that before 2014, we used to import almost 100 per cent of our mobile phones and electronics and now, we are making almost 100 per cent of our mobile phones.

“With the policies of the current government, we will very soon export mobile phones worth $100 billion,” he added.

According to Abhiraj Bhal, Founder, Urban Company, the government was highly instrumental in helping them generate a certified skilled workforce.

“We now employ 57,000 people in 62 cities. Startup India initiative helped us brainstorm for hours and create a highly conducive startup ecosystem,” he said.

Rohan Verma, CEO, Map My India, said that this government has unlocked the tremendous opportunity in space and geospatial over the last four years.

“Earlier, it was very difficult to work and all technology in the geospatial sector was very restricted. But when we reached out to Niti Aayog, they got the policies amended, enabling us to serve the country and make us atmanirbhar,” he noted.

–IANS

na/dpb

New Delhi, May 21 (IANS) Tech giant Microsoft has introduced a new category of Windows PCs designed for the artificial intelligence (AI) era.

Called ‘Copilot+ PCs’, these are the fastest and most intelligent Windows PCs ever built, the company said in a statement.

Starting at $999, the PCs come with new silicon capable of an incredible 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second), all–day battery life and access to the most advanced AI models.

“These experiences come to life on a set of thin, light and beautiful devices from Microsoft Surface and our OEM partners Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, with availability starting on June 18,” said Yusuf Mehdi, Executive Vice President, Consumer Chief Marketing Officer.

Connected to and enhanced by the large language models (LLMs) running in Azure Cloud in concert with small language models (SLMs), Copilot+ PCs can now achieve a level of performance never seen before.

“They are up to 20 times more powerful and up to 100 times as efficient for running AI workloads and deliver industry-leading AI acceleration,” said the company.

The Microsoft ‘Pluton Security’ processor will be enabled by default on all Copilot+ PCs for security.

“Now with Recall, you can access virtually what you have seen or done on your PC in a way that feels like having photographic memory,” the company informed.

Adobe’s flagship apps are coming to Copilot+ PCs, including Photoshop, Lightroom and Express and Illustrator, Premiere Pro and more will arrive this summer.

–IANS

na/

New Delhi, May 20 (IANS) Riding on the overall economic growth across the spectrum, especially in the vibrant startup and unicorn ecosystem, India can achieve the ‘Viksit Bharat’ status even before 2047, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Monday.

Addressing startup/unicorn founders and innovators during the ‘Digital Bharat, Viksit Bharat’ event in the national capital, the Union Minister said that India is the only economy that is growing, even at the most conservative estimate, at over 7 per cent, to become the fourth and then the third-largest world economy sooner than expected.

“This will happen only because of the quality of the transformation which has been facilitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and its conducive policies,” he told the gathering.

Startups emerging from small cities, from less-privileged backgrounds, were not even conceivable 10 years ago, he noted.

“During the previous regimes, the only criteria required to become successful was connections. This is no more the case as innovation is now happening in small towns and cities,” Hardeep Singh Puri said.

India is now home to more than 100 unicorns (with a valuation of $1 billion and above) and over 1.25 lakh startups.

“India is third in the number of unicorns and second in total number of startups and the first nation in creating new startups,” the Union Minister said.

–IANS

na/pgh