OpenAI says its AI voice assistant is now better to chat with

OpenAI released updates Monday for Advanced Voice Mode, its AI voice feature that enables real-time conversations in ChatGPT, to make the AI assistant more personable and interrupt users less frequently.

Manuka Stratta, an OpenAI post-training researcher, announced the changes in a video posted Monday to the company’s official social media channels.

OpenAI’s latest update aims to address a frequent problem with AI voice assistants, which will interrupt users when they pause to think or take a deep breath.

Free users of ChatGPT now have access to a new version of Advanced Voice Mode that lets users pause, without being interrupted, when speaking to the AI assistant. Paying users of ChatGPT — including subscribers to OpenAI’s Plus, Teams, Edu, Business, and Pro tiers — will also now get less frequent interruptions when using Advanced Voice Mode, as well as an improved personality for the voice assistant.

An OpenAI spokesperson tells TechCrunch its new AI voice assistant for paying users is “more direct, engaging, concise, specific, and creative in its answers.”

The improvements to Advanced Voice Mode come amid intense pressure from competitors in the AI voice assistant space.

Sesame — an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup created by Oculus cofounder Brendan Iribe — recently went viral for its natural-sounding AI voice assistants, Maya and Miles. Larger players are also stepping more aggressively into the AI voice assistant space, such as Amazon, which is readying the release of its LLM-powered version of Alexa.