There's already case law on these sorts of shenanigans: Midler v. Ford Motor Co., so Altman was either ignorant of this, in which case OpenAI needs new counsel, or he knew and did it anyway, because fuck you Scarlett Johannson. I'm pretty sure it's the latter.

https://gizmodo.com/openai-pausing-chatgpt-4o-scarlett-johansson-voice-1851488261

OpenAI Will Ditch ChatGPT's Scarlett Johansson-Like Voice: Report

ChatGPT-4o's "Sky" voice belongs to a different actress and is not meant to be an imitation, OpenAI said

Gizmodo
@scalzi Which is, you have to admit, painfully on-brand for OpenAI (and Altman).
@Meyerweb @scalzi Strikes me as pretty typical tech-bro "Act first, ask permission later" with the assumption that whatever you're doing is so cool or influential that whoever you need to ask permission of will either happily grant it (once they know how cool you are) or will be forced to grant it by societal pressure. I imagine this tactic has a high failure rate, but tech-bros never worry about that.

@bmac @Meyerweb @scalzi Tech-bros are typically more interested in a chance at success than worry about the looming failures. It's in all their books.

It's also conceptually the same way spam companies work. They're waiting for those hundred suckers in a million to click that link....

Spam-bros.