OpenAI Releases ChatGPT’s Voice To Some Paying Customers

OpenAI, on Tuesday, began rolling out ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode, giving its users their first access to GPT-4o’s hyperrealistic audio responses.

The alpha version will be available to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users today, and OpenAI says the feature will gradually roll out to all Plus users in the last quarter of 2024. When OpenAI first showcased GPT-4o’s voice in May, the feature shocked audiences with quick responses and uncanny resemblance to a real human’s voice.

OpenAI says the video and screensharing capabilities showcased during its Spring Update will not be part of this alpha, launching at a later date. For now, the GPT-4o demo that blew everyone away is still just a demo, but some premium users will now have access to ChatGPT’s voice feature shown there.

You may have already tried out the Voice Mode currently available in ChatGPT, but OpenAI says Advanced Voice Mode is different. ChatGPT’s old solution to audio used three separate models: one to convert your voice to text, GPT-4 to process your prompt, and then a third to convert ChatGPT’s text into voice. But GPT-4o is multimodal, capable of processing these tasks without the help of auxiliary models, creating significantly lower latency conversations. OpenAI also claims GPT-4o can sense emotional intonations in your voice, including sadness, excitement or singing.

In this pilot, ChatGPT Plus users will get to see first-hand how hyperrealistic OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode really is.

OpenAI says it’s releasing ChatGPT’s new voice gradually to closely monitor its usage. People in the alpha group will get an alert in the ChatGPT app, followed by an email with instructions on how to use it.

In the months since OpenAI’s demo, the company says it tested GPT-4o’s voice capabilities with more than 100 external red teamers who speak 45 different languages. OpenAI says a report on these safety efforts is coming in early August.