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OpenAI Acquires Weights.gg, Shuts Replay Voice App

5/18/2026

Summary

OpenAI Acquires Weights

OpenAI acquired voice-cloning startup Weights.gg, taking its IP and a small team, while financial terms were undisclosed.
Weights.gg shut its Replay app on April 1, 2026, which had let users create synthetic voices of Taylor Swift, Kanye West, President Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Blackpink members and Bugs Bunny.
OpenAI reassigned former Weights.gg staff to internal audio and multimodal AI teams.
OpenAI continues expanding voice API capabilities, including real-time translation and voice-based agents.

Summary

Experts Warn

Industry experts warn that realistic AI celebrity voices could be weaponized for misinformation and fraud.
Copyright advocates say cloning famous voices without consent breaches intellectual property rights.
Streaming platforms are evaluating policies to detect and label AI-generated speech.
Competitors like Mistral are releasing open-source voice models, intensifying AI audio rivalry.
Analysts predict voice interaction will become a core AI interface, shifting users from typing to speaking.

Summary

OpenAI Closes Weights

OpenAI acquired Weights.gg, a startup that had raised roughly $4 million, after two anonymous sources told The New York Times that the terms were not disclosed.
After the acquisition, the six-person team was reassigned to various OpenAI groups.
Weights.gg announced it will shut down its services in March 2026, with the platform going offline on April 1 2026.
Its public repository contained voice models that mimicked celebrities and fictional characters such as Samuel L. Jackson and Bugs Bunny.

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OpenAI Acquires Weights

OpenAI acquired voice-cloning startup Weights.gg, taking its IP and a small team, while financial terms were undisclosed.
Weights.gg shut its Replay app on April 1, 2026, which had let users create synthetic voices of Taylor Swift, Kanye West, President Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Blackpink members and Bugs Bunny.
OpenAI reassigned former Weights.gg staff to internal audio and multimodal AI teams.
OpenAI continues expanding voice API capabilities, including real-time translation and voice-based agents.

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