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 Large Language models, like silicon valley ideas, depend on IP theft for their very existence, he didn't think I would be any different stealing from someone well know
@Seruko @scalzi
The flow of it all was weird, though. First OpenAI negotiates for months for the legal right to use her voice. That fails when she says 'no.'
Then he personally messages her, asking to re-open the negotiations, just a day or two before they start publicly using her voice.
That second part is what's bugging me. Is it him thinking 'uh-oh I screwed up we need to nail this down'? Is it his counsel telling him something like that? or is it some kind of weird attempt at intimidation?

@FeralRobots

Shock at being told no.