Why OpenAI Is Failing: 3 Reasons Scarlett Johansson Proves You’re Doing AI Wrong

OpenAI doesn't have a data problem. They have a God Complex problem.

Sam Altman wants to build "Her." He wants to give you a digital girlfriend that giggles at your jokes and whispers in your ear. He’s obsessed with the Hollywood dream of AI.

The Scarlett Johansson scandal wasn't a legal glitch. It was a funeral for trust.

Consent is the New Currency

OpenAI asked Scarlett Johansson to voice their model. She said no. They did it anyway.

They didn’t use her actual files. They used a "lookalike" voice. They played a semantics game to bypass a human being’s "No."

I see founders doing this every day. They scrape LinkedIn without permission. They feed sensitive client data into public LLMs. They think "move fast and break things" applies to human identity.

It doesn't.

Stop trying to bypass people. Start building systems that people actually want to be a part of.

Personality is a Gimmick, Not a Product

OpenAI spent months perfecting a flirty, breathy voice for GPT-4o. Why?

Because they want you to feel an emotional connection to the software. They want to trigger your dopamine. They want a parasocial relationship where you stop treating the tool like a calculator and start treating it like a friend.

This is a distraction. It’s a parlor trick.

The best tools are invisible. You don’t need your spreadsheet to laugh at your jokes. You don’t need your email client to sound like a movie star. You need the work done.

I see businesses failing because they are obsessed with the "AI Personality." They spend weeks "prompt engineering" a chatbot to have a "quirky brand voice" while the actual logic of the bot is broken.

The Death of the "Everything App"

OpenAI wants to be your search engine, your tutor, your girlfriend, and your coder.

They are trying to own the entire stack of human experience. This is the classic Silicon Valley Trap: Arrogance leads to bloat. Bloat leads to mediocrity.

When you try to do everything, you end up doing nothing perfectly.

The winners of the next three years won't be the companies that build "God Models." It will be the people who build "Boring AI."

The Insight: The Great De-Gifting

For the last two years, we’ve been in a state of awe. "Look, it can write a poem!" "Look, it can sound like Scarlett Johansson!"

That awe is curdling into resentment.

My prediction: The next 12 months will see a massive pivot toward "Cold AI."

Users are going to demand tools that don't try to talk back. We are going to see a rejection of the "Humanoid" interface. We want data. We want speed. We want privacy.

OpenAI is doubling down on the "Humanoid" because they want to capture the consumer market. But the real money is in the infrastructure. By trying to be a celebrity, OpenAI is leaving the door wide open for a "Boring" competitor to take the enterprise market.

They are building a toy. You should be building a factory.

The Scarlett Johansson incident proved that OpenAI doesn't respect the boundary between data and personhood. In the long run, that is a fatal business error. People will use a tool they don't like, but they will never truly rely on a tool they don't trust.

OpenAI is losing the trust of the very creators they need to survive.

Don't follow them off that cliff.

Build your own systems. Own your own data. Respect the "No."

The hype is dying. The work is just starting.

Are you building a tool, or are you just playing with a toy?