OpenAI has been in the news due to the turmoil that followed the resignation of CEO Sam Altman on Friday. Since then, nearly all OpenAI staff have threatened to resign and demanded the resignation of the board. Former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear was named CEO of the AI startup, and Altman was hired by Microsoft to lead AI research.
Following talks with the OpenAI board, Altman has agreed to return as CEO of the company he co-founded. Despite the upheaval, OpenAI has kept its most popular product updated. On Wednesday, the business announced that ChatGPT with voice will be free for all app users. The voice discussions feature was formerly available on ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise.
OpenAI announced on X (previously Twitter) that voice functionality had been enabled to the ChatGPT app for all free users. “Download the app on your phone and tap the headphones icon to start a conversation,” the post added. OpenAI posted a video of the function in action, interacting with a ChatGPT user, in its post.
ChatGPT with voice is now available to all free users. Download the app on your phone and tap the headphones icon to start a conversation.
Sound on 🔊 pic.twitter.com/c5sCFDAWU6
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 21, 2023
The feature is represented by a headphone icon in the bottom right corner of the chat window. After tapping the icon, users are taken to an introduction screen for the ‘Chat with voice’ function, which offers information about the voice discussions feature.
It also states that all voice chats would be kept in chat history as transcriptions. However, audio clips of chats are not saved. The language is also detected automatically by the app. Users can also choose a preferred language in Settings to improve the accuracy of voice detection.
The ChatGPT app then allows users to select a favorite voice for the feature from a list of five options. The Chat with Voice function is enabled after providing microphone access, allowing users to enjoy free-flowing spoken chats with ChatGPT.
Users on the free plan, however, will not receive real-time updates like they do from voice assistants like Siri or Google Assistant because the app is limited to accessing available data until January 2022.
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In September, voice conversation was made available to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise members. OpenAI has previously stated that it had collaborated with professional voice actors to develop the new feature.
The ChatGPT app’s chat with voice feature answers questions by transforming voiced queries into text that the chatbot can understand. The company’s innovative text-to-speech (TTS) technology is then used to transform the responses into audio format.
ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users can additionally use ChatGPT to browse the web and acquire real-time data after the information cutoff date has passed. According to OpenAI, the feature will soon be available to all users.