OpenAI released updates Monday for Advanced Voice Mode, its AI voice feature that permits real-time conversations in ChatGPT, to make the AI assistant more personable and interrupt users less continuously.
Manuka Stratta, an OpenAI post-training researcher, announced the changes in a video posted Monday to the corporate’s official social media channels.
OpenAI’s latest update goals to handle a frequent problem with AI voice assistants, which is able to interrupt users after they pause to think or take a deep breath.
Free users of ChatGPT now have access to a new edition of Advanced Voice Mode that lets users pause, without being interrupted, when chatting with the AI assistant. Paying users of ChatGPT — including subscribers to OpenAI’s Plus, Teams, Edu, Business, and Pro tiers — may also now get less frequent interruptions when using Advanced Voice Mode, in addition to an improved personality for the voice assistant.
An OpenAI spokesperson tells TechCrunch its latest AI voice assistant for paying users is “more direct, engaging, concise, specific, and artistic in its answers.”
The improvements to Advanced Voice Mode come amid intense pressure from competitors within the AI voice assistant space.
Sesame — an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup created by Oculus cofounder Brendan Iribe — recently went viral for its natural-sounding AI voice assistants, Maya and Miles. Larger players are also stepping more aggressively into the AI voice assistant space, akin to Amazon, which is readying the release of its LLM-powered version of Alexa.
