OpenAI Has Started to Roll Out One of the Most Anticipated (and Revolutionary) ChatGPT Features: Its New Voice Mode

OpenAI surprised everyone in May with the announcement of a Her-style voice mode for ChatGPT. The company led by Sam Altman initially promised that the new feature would arrive over “the next few weeks,” but later announced that it needed more time to address some security challenges.

Some months later, the long-awaited voice mode is finally here. It’s not the final version, but an alpha version for ChatGPT Plus users. OpenAI will gradually roll out the new feature until August, when all users of the paid subscription should have access to it.

Waiting for Vision Capabilities

If you’ve been selected to test the new voice mode, you’ll be notified within the app. Once activated, you’ll be able to engage with ChatGPT powered by GPT-4o in a more natural manner. This means you’ll be able to interrupt and have and emotional conversations with the AI chatbot.

Unlike the previous voice mode, where the voice was converted to text, processed, and then converted back to voice, GPT-4o is a multimodal model that processes everything directly, resulting in extremely low latency.

Additionally, GPT-4o isn’t limited to English. OpenAI has tested it with over 45 languages. However, there are currently only four voices available: Juniper, Breeze, Cove, and Ember.

Sky, the voice that sounded like Scarlett Johansson’s, won’t be available. The actress, who played virtual assistant Samantha in the movie Her, was “shocked, angered, and in disbelief” when she heard a voice on ChatGPT that sounded so similar to hers. Johansson had declined an offer from Altman to use her voice on the popular artificial intelligence chatbot.

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In a demo we saw a few months ago, ChatGPT was seen helping kids with homework and describing things in a room as OpenAI employees talked with it effortlessly. These capabilities are powered by GPT-4o’s vision, but the company says that these capabilities will be available “at a later date.”

This article was written by Javier Marquez and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.

Image | OpenAI

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