Remember in May, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, did a demo of a voice tool which Scarlett Johansson slammed for sounding like her. The release was delayed without an explanation. Now, the company has begun rolling out Voice Mode to a select number of users.
“We’re starting to roll out advanced Voice Mode to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users. Advanced Voice Mode offers more natural, real-time conversations, allows you to interrupt anytime, and senses and responds to your emotions,’ stated the company
For the record, OpenAI has never said it held its release back because of the actress’s concerns. The AI voice assistant is part of a major upgrade to its flagship chatbot that intensifies competition with the likes of Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa.
For the select users who will be the first to have a feel of Voice Mode, OpenAI is set to inform them via email. The email will contain instructions on how to use the voice assistant. The select users will receive a message in their mobile app too. OpenAI has promised more users who have ChatGPT Plus will be added to the program. Video and screen sharing capabilities are set for launch at a later date.
The generative AI giant claims it tested Voice mode with 45 languages. In the testing phase of GPT-4o’s voice capabilities, 100 plus external red teamers were part of the process.
This new advanced Voice Mode will come with four pre-set voices and has been programmed not to mimic the voices of real people. AI has always raised privacy concerns and OpenAI had this to say, “To protect people’s privacy, we’ve trained the model to only speak in the four pre-set voices, and we built systems to block outputs that differ from those voices. We’ve also implemented guardrails to block requests for violent or copyrighted content.”
