Culture
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Rani Molla

OpenAI: ScarJo voice isn’t ScarJo, but we’ll mute her anyway

OpenAI says its Scarlett Johansson-sounding Sky voice is actually a “different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice” but it won’t say who to “protect their privacy.” It also said today it’s “working to pause the use of Sky” while it addresses questions about how the voice was chosen.

In a blog post yesterday, the company explained that it winnowed down the five voices it uses in ChatGPT from more than 400 submissions from voice and screen actors. It considered a number of criteria, including actors from diverse background whose voice “feels timeless,” “inspires trust” and is “natural and easy to listen to.”

The AI company said its chatbot voices come from actors who received “above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.”

This isn't the only case of apparent AI voice theft, with two voice actors suing start-up Lovo for illegally using their recordings.

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Family in front of TV

Hollywood may have its best year at the box office since 2019, but streaming audiences are still obsessed with old content

Viewers are opting for catalog content over new shows and movies across (pretty much) every major streamer.

Tom Jones6/29/26
culture
Tom Jones

The BBC has become the world’s top news website... by collapsing a little less than its competition

Press Gazette just published its annual look at the biggest news sites in the world across all languages; for the most part, it doesn’t make for particularly pretty reading.

The journalism industry publication’s latest update, which is based on estimates provided by Similarweb for May, found that 37 of the world’s 50 most visited news sites saw their reach shrink. Press Gazette highlighted that American outlets have been hit particularly hard by declining Google traffic compared to European counterparts, owing to the platform’s AI features rolling out earlier in the US.

Even the BBC, having climbed the rankings from last year to top the 2026 chart — reportedly in part thanks to Similarweb’s decision to combine the “.co.uk” and “.com” versions of the URL, given that the sites redirect to each other depending on the user’s location — showed a 1.9% decline from last year.

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