It’s almost two months since OpenAI showed off ChatGPT’s impressive new Voice Mode (and got into a public spat with Scarlett Johansson), but the feature is now ready to roll out to Plus subscribers – or at least a small group of them.
ChatGPT fans have been nagging OpenAI about the Voice Mode on an almost daily basis, and CEO Sam Altman has now given an update on X (formerly Twitter). In the short reply to someone asking about the rebooted voice mode, Altman says “alpha rollout starts to plus subscribers next week!”
The casual nature of the reply suggests this isn’t a full announcement, so further delays are possible. But it does suggest the new Voice Mode is now imminent, for a select group of ChatGPT Plus subscribers (a tier that costs $20 / £16 / AU$28 a month).
The new mode probably won’t get a full rollout in the week beginning July 29, because OpenAI previously said on X (formerly Twitter) that it’ll “start the alpha with a small group of users to gather feedback and expand based on what we learn”.
OpenAI had initially planned to start this small rollout to Alpha users in late June, but said it needed “one more month to reach our bar to launch”. Well, it seems that extra time, which it needed to improve the “model’s ability to detect and refuse certain content”, has been fruitful and it’ll be out in the wild (for some) within days.
This may again prove frustrating for ChatGPT Plus subscribers who aren’t in the select Alpha group, but OpenAI says that it is “planning for all Plus users to have access in the fall”. That appears to still be its planned schedule for the new Voice Mode, but we’ll likely get a bigger update next week.
What is ChatGPT’s new Voice Mode?
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OpenAI has been stoking the hype for ChatGPT’s Voice Mode in the weeks since it was first demoed, launching various videos (like the one above) that show its ability to do improv routines with different character voices, help users with interview roleplay, and assist with learning new languages.
When you watch these demos, it’s easy to see why the new Voice Mode is so highly anticipated. We may have seen the likes of Siri subsequently get an AI upgrade, but the no other AI voice assistants have yet demonstrated an equivalent capacity for what OpenAI calls “real-time, natural conversations with AI”.
An added element to these voice interactions is that the latest GPT-4o model can also form its responses based on a combination of audio, text and also video – which means sci-fi conversations like the one in this demo video.
Whether or not ChatGPT’s new Voice Mode can achieve this level of fluidity and consistency in the real world is something we’re going to find out very soon. With OpenAI also revealing a prototype of its SearchGPT search engine, it’s shaping up to be another wild month for the world’s best-known AI company.