OpenAI’s new ChatGPT model, called GPT-4o, provides more human-like interactions through a voice mode, and it is capable of conversations that incorporate text, audio and video in real time
By Jeremy Hsu
13 May 2024
OpenAI’s latest model offers a more human-like conversational experience
JIYI Image / Alamy
OpenAI announced its newest artificial intelligence model, called GPT-4o, which will soon power some versions of the company’s ChatGPT product. The upgraded ChatGPT can swiftly respond to text, audio and video inputs from its real-time conversational partner – all while speaking with inflections and wording that convey a strong sense of emotion and personality.
The company demonstrated the emotional mimicry of the new voice mode during a supposedly live OpenAI presentation, featuring both the ChatGPT mobile app and a new desktop app, on 13 May. Speaking in a female-sounding voice and responding to the name ChatGPT, the new AI’s conversational capabilities seemed more akin to the personable AI voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 science fiction film Her than to the more canned and robotic responses of typical voice assistant technologies.
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“The new GPT-4o voice-to-voice interaction more closely parallels human-human interaction,” says Michelle Cohn at the University of California, Davis. “A big part of this is the short lag times… but an even bigger part is the level of emotional expressiveness the voice generates.”
During a conversation with company CTO Mira Murati and two other employees, the GPT-4o-powered ChatGPT advised OpenAI’s Mark Chen on his heavy and fast-paced breathing by saying “Whoa, slow down, you’re not a vacuum cleaner” and then suggesting a breathing exercise. The AI also visually examined a drawing by OpenAI’s Barret Zoph, which included words and a heart, by responding in gushing tones: “Aw, I see you wrote I love ChatGPT, that is so sweet of you.”
The new ChatGPT also verbally instructed its conversational partners on solving a simple linear equation, explained the function of computer code and interpreted a chart showing temperature lines peaking in the summer months. When prompted, the AI even retold a made-up bedtime story several times, switching between increasingly dramatic narrations and singing the ending.