Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards | Getty Images)

Since the launch of its latest AI language model, GPT-4o, OpenAI has found itself on the defensive over the past week due to a string of bad news, rumors, and ridicule circulating on traditional and social media. The negative attention is potentially a sign that OpenAI has entered a new level of public visibility—and is more prominently receiving pushback to its AI approach beyond what it has seen from tech pundits and government regulators.

OpenAI's rough week started last Monday when the company previewed a flirty AI assistant with a voice seemingly inspired by Scarlett Johansson from the 2013 film Her. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman alluded to the film himself on X just before the event, and we had previously made that comparison with an earlier voice interface for ChatGPT that launched in September 2023.

While that September update included a voice called "Sky" that some have said sounds like Johansson, it was GPT-4o's seemingly lifelike new conversational interface, complete with laughing and emotionally charged tonal shifts, that led to a widely circulated Daily Show segment ridiculing the demo for its perceived flirty nature. Next, a Saturday Night Live joke reinforced an implied connection to Johansson's voice.

Enlarge / An image Ilya Sutskever tweeted with this OpenAI resignation announcement. From left to right: New OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki, President Greg Brockman, Sutskever, CEO Sam Altman, and CTO Mira Murati. (credit: Ilya Sutskever / X)

On Tuesday evening, OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever announced that he is leaving the company he co-founded, six months after he participated in the coup that temporarily ousted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Jan Leike, a fellow member of Sutskever's Superalignment team, is reportedly resigning with him.

"After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI," Sutskever tweeted. "The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous, and I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under the excellent research leadership of @merettm. It was an honor and a privilege to have worked together, and I will miss everyone dearly."

Sutskever has been with the company since its founding in 2015 and is widely seen as one of the key engineers behind some of OpenAI's biggest technical breakthroughs. As a former OpenAI board member, he played a key role in the removal of Sam Altman as CEO in the shocking firing last November. While it later emerged that Altman's firing primarily stemmed from a power struggle with former board member Helen Toner, Sutskever sided with Toner and personally delivered the news to Altman that he was being fired on behalf of the board.