[imagesource: Warner Bros.]

The new version of ChatGPT is closer than ever to that science fiction scenario.

OpenAI has upgraded ChatGPT’s voice mode into something more like a Her-inspired voice assistant feature that can read your facial expressions and translate spoken language in real time.

It has only been a year and a half since the launch of ChatGPT, and on Monday, OpenAI announced its new model called GPT-4o. The ‘o’ stands for Omni, which gives the chatbot new abilities to understand and create audio, video, and still images.

The Guardian notes how the “system is uncanny to behold” as it engages in prolonged conversations about the world seen through a camera lens, carries out live translation between two different languages, and even laughs at appropriate points.

The Verge compares the assistant’s voice response to the character Scarlett Johansson played in the utopian movie Her, who, as a sophisticated AI assistant, is able to inflict such humanity and emotion in her interactions that her male owner can’t help but form a deep relationship with her.

OpenAI founder Sam Altman tweeted that the AI “is still flawed, still limited, and it still seems more impressive on first use than it does after you spend more time with it” when GPT-4 was launched in 2023, but a year on, there is no such doubt with the launch of its successor. Altman released a longer statement about “an exciting future where we are able to use computers to do much more than ever before”, while tweeting a single word: “her”, the name of his favourite 2013 Spike Jonze film.

While previous versions of the AI were able to speak to users through a laborious process of transcribing speech to text, running it through the normal ChatGPT system, and then generating human-sounding speech in reply, the new system can operate directly in speech without needing to lean on other models to prop it up. It can even speed up responses and acknowledge quirks such as tone of voice.

You’re going to have to see it to believe it:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by The Verge (@verge)

GPT-40 is also amazing at helping you nail an interview at say, OpenAI – evidently:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Pubity (@pubity)

Someone commented with a pointed joke on the demo video that “Black Mirror was a documentary”.

The new capabilities will launch in a limited “alpha” release in “the coming weeks” and be available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers first once a wider rollout begins.

“The new voice (and video) mode is the best computer interface I’ve ever used. It feels like AI from the movies; and it’s still a bit surprising to me that it’s real,” Altman said in a blog post just after the livestream. “Getting to human-level response times and expressiveness turns out to be a big change.”

The introduction of this new voice assistant follows a Bloomberg report suggesting that OpenAI is close to securing a deal with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone.

When questioned during the briefing, OpenAI engineers and CTO Mira Murati stated, “We haven’t talked about any of the partnerships.” Given Siri’s reputation for unreliability, an assistant inspired by the AI from the movie Her that can effectively answer questions rather than just “searching the web” seems to be the anticipated direction.

[sources:verge&guardian]