OpenAI has announced a delay in the rollout of its highly anticipated Voice Mode for ChatGPT, initially set for late June, due to technical and safety concerns.
The Voice Mode, a major highlight of OpenAI’s Spring Update event in May, promised more natural, conversational interactions with the AI, incorporating emotional inflection and the ability to handle interruptions.
We’re sharing an update on the advanced Voice Mode we demoed during our Spring Update, which we remain very excited about:
We had planned to start rolling this out in alpha to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users in late June, but need one more month to reach our bar to launch.…
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) June 25, 2024
The new feature was expected to provide a more human-like experience with the AI chatbot. However, OpenAI now states that more time is needed to ensure the Voice Mode can effectively detect and refuse certain content and to improve the overall user experience.
“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.”
The delay means that Voice Mode will not be available until late July or early August at the earliest, and even then, only to a small group of users. OpenAI plans for all ChatGPT Plus users to have access in the fall, contingent on meeting high safety and reliability standards.
The postponement has sparked frustration among ChatGPT users and the AI community, with many criticizing OpenAI for overpromising and underdelivering.
Biggest rug pull in history.
Many people signed up for Plus with the expectation that voice would be available “in the coming weeks”. You guys knew you didn’t actually have a product but dangled it out there in order to take users’ hard earned money.
You guys are quickly…
— Free (@KaladinFree) June 25, 2024
The backlash is compounded by OpenAI’s history of announcing delayed or altered features before full release. The controversy is further fueled by comparisons to the science fiction film “Her,” featuring a virtual companion voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
Johansson threatened legal action against OpenAI, claiming one of the voices used resembled her character from the movie. OpenAI has since removed the controversial voice and stated it was developed independently.
Cool. Just don’t announce features 3-4 months before release.
— Shikhar Srivastava (@shikhar_sri) June 25, 2024
OpenAI faces stiff competition in AI, with rivals like Anthropic, which recently released its new foundation model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
Despite these setbacks and the growing criticism, OpenAI continues to make strides in the AI field, signing new enterprise accounts and integrating its GPT-4o model into various applications, such as a cancer screening app for clinicians by healthcare startup Color.
At this rate Anthropic will release it’s voice model sooner
— the end is imminent (@luismmolina) June 25, 2024
Additionally, OpenAI is working on new video and screen-sharing capabilities that were also showcased during the Spring Update event.
In a post on OpenAI’s official Discord server, the company reiterated its commitment to improving the model’s ability to detect and refuse certain content, enhancing the user experience, and preparing its infrastructure to handle the expected influx of users.
I’m experiencing iterative disappointment with @OpenAI
— MindBranches (@MindBranches) June 25, 2024
The advanced Voice Mode might not launch for all ChatGPT Plus customers until the fall, depending on whether it meets certain internal safety and reliability checks.
Don’t have a huge demo presentation if the rollout is happening so slow… it was probably misleading to many.
— Joe Grech 🦇🔊 (e/acc) (🇹🇷tr/acc) (@JoeBGrech) June 25, 2024
This delay will not affect the rollout of other features, such as solving math problems given a picture of the problem and explaining various settings menus on a device, which are designed to work across ChatGPT on smartphones and desktop clients, including a recently released macOS app.
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