OpenAI's new voice model wants you to talk over it

OpenAI unveiled a new voice model called GPT-Live during a Wednesday livestream, saying the update is built to make talking with AI feel more like talking to a human. The company said the assistant can listen and speak simultaneously instead of waiting for a clean pause at the end of every sentence before responding. It will also acknowledge the user with intermittent sounds such as "mmhm," "yeah," and "got it" while the human is still talking. In one demo, a user asked ChatGPT to fact-check the date of a coming meeting while also checking the weather and traffic along their route. ChatGPT responded with short acknowledgments like "hmm" and "sure," then continued working through the request without losing the thread as the user added more information requests. OpenAI also showed off ChatGPT's ability to translate language in real time. Previous turn-based assistants had to wait for the speaker to finish before translating. Now, a full-duplex assistant can keep pace more naturally as a conversation unfolds, the company said. Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president, described the update during the livestream as a "much more natural way of interacting with your computer." OpenAI is not the only company trying to make AI voice assistants feel less like a baton-passing chatbot and more like an active listener. In May, Thinking Machines, the AI lab led by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, teased similar technology. The company said its interaction models are designed to handle input and output continuously across audio, video, and text, instead of relying on the stop-and-start rhythm of traditional chatbots. Thinking Machines said the updated models can "handle interaction natively" and smooth out human-to-AI interactions "rather than forcing humans to contort themselves to AI interfaces." The update also arrives as AI language models have become an internet punchline. Creators regularly mock their oddly chipper tone, their overuse of phrases like "awesome," and the awkward little pause before an answer arrives.