ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode Set to Launch Next Week

ChatGPT's Advanced Voice could arrive 'next week'

OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman revealed on X (formerly Twitter) Thursday that its Advanced Voice feature will begin rolling out "next week," though only for a few select ChatGPT-Plus subscribers. The company plans to "start the alpha with a small group of users to gather feedback and expand based on what we learn." Recommended Videos alpha rollout starts to plus subscribers next week! — Sam Altman (@sama) July 25, 2024 Advanced Voice, which does away with the text prompt and enables users to converse directly with the AI as one would another human, was initially announced in May alongside the release of GPT-4o during the company's Spring Update event. Unlike existing digital assistants like Siri and Google Assistant, which only provide canned answers to user queries, ChatGPT's Advanced Voice provides human-like responses, nearly latency-free, and in multiple languages. The GPT-4o model is able to respond to audio inputs in 320 milliseconds on average, which is on par with how quickly humans react to normal conversation. As you can see in the demo video below, the model can converse with multiple users simultaneously, improvise talking points and questions in both English and Portuguese as well as conveying them with human-ish emotions, including "laughter." Learning a new language with ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode There's no word yet on how the company will choose participants for alpha trial aside from them being $20/month ChatGPT Plus-tier subscribers. The alpha release was originally scheduled for June, though that date was pushed back "to reach our bar to launch" and improve its ability to detect and reject prohibited forms of content, as well as buttress the company's IT infrastructure to accommodate the anticipated user load increase. As the company announced in June, the feature's full rollout won't happen until at least this fall, and its exact timing will, again, depend on it "meeting our high safety and reliability bar." Giving ChatGPT the ability to converse naturally with its users is a huge advancement. Eliminating the need for a context window reduce user hardware requirements and expand the potential integrations and use cases for AI (such as increasing access to users with body mobility or dexterity limitations). It can also help speed the technology's adoption by the public by reducing the barrier to entry for less-tech-savvy users who are comfortable with interacting with their computers via "hey Siri" but blanch at the prospect of prompt engineering.

ChatGPT highly anticipated Voice Mode to launch next week -- here's how to get it

OpenAI has had a busy couple of days. It just announced the release of SearchGPT. You can join the waitlist for ChatGPT's Google competitor right now. The company is following up on that release by revealing that the highly anticipated Voice Mode will launch next week, giving AI fans something else to look forward to. In an X post responding to an OpenAI user asking for more information, CEO Sam Altman said, "Alpha rollout starts to plus subscribers next week!" That means you will definitely need to pay for ChatGPT Plus if you want to try out the voice features, which the company first demoed a couple of months ago. Even if you are a Plus subscriber, you may not get access. On the official OpenAI X account, the company said it will "start the alpha with a small group of users to gather feedback and expand based on what we learn." You'll need to be among the users selected if you want to try it, but the company didn't provide any details about how to sign up for access, so it may just pick people from the Plus subscriber pool at random. Thankfully, OpenAI said it's "planning for all Plus users to have access in the fall," so if you aren't in the initial wave of people selected, you'll be able to try out the new feature soon enough. Interestingly, Altman revealed a narrower release window in a simple X post rather than having a more formal press release or live stream. That could mean a slow rollout. The company originally planned to launch the new feature in June but delayed it for "one more month to reach our bar to launch." If Altman's X post is true, it appears the company is close enough to hit that bar to let some of its highest-paying users get access.