- OpenAI delayed ChatGPT’s new Voice Mode, forcing it to postpone the launch to sometime in July.
- The delay will not affect the rollout of the new video and screen sharing capabilities demoed separately during OpenAI’s spring press event.
OUR TAKE
This decision demonstrates the company’s strong focus on ensuring product quality and user experience, while also highlighting the challenges and complexities faced when introducing new technologies. As AI technology continues to evolve, OpenAI’s decisions and strategies have a profound impact on both the industry and users, especially when it comes to advancing voice technology and ensuring data security.
–Revel Cheng, BTW reporter
OpenAI delayed ChatGPT’s new Voice Mode, forcing it to postpone the launch to sometime in July.
What happened
In a post on OpenAI’s official Discord server, OpenAI says that it had planned to start rolling out advanced Voice Mode in alpha to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users in late June, but that lingering issues forced it to postpone the launch to sometime in July.
In May, when OpenAI first demoed an eerily realistic, nearly real-time “advanced voice mode” for its AI-powered chatbot platform ChatGPT, the company said that the feature would roll out to paying ChatGPT users within a few weeks.
Months later, OpenAI says that it needs more time.
OpenAI says that Advanced Voice Mode may not launch for all ChatGPT Plus customers until the fall, depending on whether it passes certain internal safety and reliability checks. The delay will not, however, affect the rollout of the new video and screen sharing capabilities demoed separately during OpenAI’s spring press event.
Those capabilities include solving math problems given a picture of the problem, and explaining various settings menus on a device. They’re designed to work across ChatGPT on smartphones as well as desktop clients, like the app for macOS, which is available to all ChatGPT users.
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Why it’s important
Onstage at the launch event, OpenAI employees showed off ChatGPT responding almost instantly to requests such as solving a math problem on a piece of paper placed in front of a researcher’s smartphone camera.
“ChatGPT’s advanced Voice Mode can understand and respond with emotions and nonverbal cues, moving us closer to real-time, natural conversations with AI,” OpenAI writes. “Our mission is to bring these new experiences to you thoughtfully.”
OpenAI’s advanced Voice Mode generated quite a bit of controversy for the default “Sky” voice’s similarity to actress Scarlett Johansson’s. Johansson later released a statement saying that she hired legal counsel to inquire about the voice and get exact details about how it was developed — and that she’d refused repeated entreaties from OpenAI to license her voice for ChatGPT.
OpenAI, while denying that it used Johansson’s voice without permission or a soundalike, later removed the offending voice.
