The AI chatbot has always just been a text box. Now it’s learning to understand and talk in new ways, specifically through picture commands or voice commands.
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OpenAI’s ChatGPT announces new features
Past updates of OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot only fixed what it could already do, such as understand text information and answer questions. This time, ChatGPT can do so much more, including allowing you to prompt the AI bot not just by typing sentences into a text box, but also by either speaking aloud or just uploading a picture.Â
According to OpenAI, the features are rolling out to paid users in the next two weeks, and regular users are likely to be able to use the features later.
ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak. Rolling out over next two weeks, Plus users will be able to have voice conversations with ChatGPT (iOS & Android) and to include images in conversations (all platforms). https://t.co/uNZjgbR5Bm pic.twitter.com/paG0hMshXb
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 25, 2023
The voice feature is not something unusual: it’s like Alexa. You press a button to ask your question. The chatbot converts it to text and feeds it to a language model. Once it gets an answer, it converts the answer back to speech and speaks it out loud. However, it’s much better than existing products because the answers will be more satisfactory thanks to the improved underlying tech used by OpenAI. The feature is only available on iOS and Android devices.
This underlying tech is also being used in a collaboration with Spotify. OpenAI is working with Spotify to translate podcasts into other languages all while keeping the sound of the podcaster’s voice.
As for picture commands, OpenAI says that if you upload a picture of whatever you’re interested in, ChatGPT will try to figure out what it is you are asking about and respond accordingly. You can utilize the app’s drawing feature to make your query more precise, or verbally or textually ask questions to accompany the image.
While you can do something similar with Google Lens, the real benefit of this update is ChatGPT can take into account your prompts and refine the answer until you’re happy.
Of course, there are likely to be some issues with these updates. Almost a year after ChatGPT’s initial launch, OpenAI seems to be still trying to figure out how to give its bot more features and capabilities without creating new sets of problems and downsides. Only time will tell what the latest features will bring for users.
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