ChatGPT given the ability to talk

ChatGPT now has the ability to have a conversation with you, artificial intelligence parent company OpenAI announced Monday. 

Through voice and image capabilities, OpenAI said the new “more intuitive” interface will offer more ways to use the program. 

The firm said the conversation will be back-and-forth and users will have the ability to “speak with it on the go, request a bedtime story for your family, or settle a dinner table debate.”

Voice conversations between ChatGPT and its Plus and Enterprise users will be rolled out in the next two week. The text-to-speech model will generate human-like audio gathered from a collaboration with voice actors, OpenAI said. 

In an interview with The Washington Post, Peter Deng, vice president of consumer products at OpenAI, said integrating the voice chat was critical to getting more users on the platform. 

“One of the hardest jobs is taking that amazing technology and translating it into the simplicity that the next 300-400 million people are looking for,” Deng told the Post. 

The technology, which boasts capabilities of crafting “realistic synthetic voices from just a few seconds of real speech,” also presents new risks. The company acknowledged that malicious actors impersonating public figures or committing fraud are a danger, but said the voice technology was designed specifically to voice chat like other technology companies have before with Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri. 

“Spotify is using the power of this technology for the pilot of their Voice Translation feature, which helps podcasters expand the reach of their storytelling by translating podcasts into additional languages in the podcasters’ own voices,” OpenAI wrote. 

In addition to the voice technology, image capabilities will be available on all platforms, the company said. Users can upload multiple photos or circle a specific part of a photo using a drawing tool to help the AI know what is being asked.

“Snap a picture of a landmark while traveling and have a live conversation about what’s interesting about it,” the company said on their website. “When you’re home, snap pictures of your fridge and pantry to figure out what’s for dinner.”