OpenAI has released a ‘Her’ inspired voice assistant feature that can read your facial expressions and translate spoken language in real time. For example, the assistant can be interrupted while speaking and respond without continued prompting while acting as a translator. This could bring a more natural flow during the conversation.
“The new voice (and video) mode is the best computer interface I’ve ever used. It feels like AI from the movies; and it’s still a bit surprising to me that it’s real. Getting to human-level response times and expressiveness turns out to be a big change,” Altman said in a blog post just after the livestream.
Reportedly, the assistant’s voice response showed a striking resemblance to the character Scarlett Johansson plays in the movie ‘Her’, where a man forms a relationship with a sophisticated AI assistant. The new update can also respond to emotions, laugh or show detailed expression, just like humans.
The future of AI is here!
After the event, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted just one word on X: “her.” Altman highlights in his tweet that Her is his favorite movie. The film explores themes of loneliness and human-AI relationships; it seems unlikely that director Spike Jonze intended for the world to precisely replicate that sense of robotic isolation.
During an interview with The Verge, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati explained that the assistant is not designed to sound like Johansson. She also emphasised that OpenAI has had these voices for a while. “Someone asked me in the audience this exact same question,” she said, adding that ‘Ah, maybe the reason I didn’t recognize it from ChatGPT is because the voice has so much personality and tonality.”
The ‘voice cloning’ features represent a makeover of ChatGPT’s existing voice mode, which could chat with you but on a limited mode. The new capabilities will launch in a limited “alpha” release in “the coming weeks” and be available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers first once a wider rollout begins.
AI mimicking humans: Boon or Bane!
With AI mimicking humans, just like the movie ‘Her’, a question arises that is AI slowly overtaking humans. It seems like we might get too engaged in talking with AI and land ourselves in isolation, just like the movie ‘Her’. Also there might be scams of voice cloning, as past reports of deepfakes had taken the election by storm.
Furthermore, a report by Business Insider’s Eugene Kim suggests that Amazon plans to release an “Alexa Plus” paid version of the voice assistant that’s powered by generative AI. The assistant is expected to offer more conversational and personalised responses. However, the release date is not clear.
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