OpenAI delayed its attractive ChatGPT voice assistants

If you’ve been dreaming of spending your summer whispering sweet nothings into the digital ears of one of the seductive ChatGPT voice assistants that OpenAI introduced last month, you’ll have to dream a little longer. On Tuesday, the company announced that its “Advanced Voice Mode” feature needed more time in the oven “to reach our launch bar.” The feature will be available to a small group of users to gather feedback, then launch to all paying ChatGPT customers in the fall.

“We are improving the model’s ability to detect and reject certain content,” OpenAI posted on X. “We are also working to improve the user experience and prepare our infrastructure to scale to millions of people while maintaining real-time responses.”

Voices have been part of ChatGPT since 2023. But last month, OpenAI introduced an improved version that sounded so human that it drew comparisons to Samantha, the seductive voice assistant from the 2013 film. Her, played by Scarlett Johansson. A few weeks after the presentation, the actress accused OpenAI of having copied her voice despite refusing permission.

OpenAI said it was still determining when the new voices (without Johansson’s sound) would roll out to paying users this fall. Another feature that lets voice assistants use your phone’s camera to understand the world around you has also been delayed until this date. “Exact timelines depend on meeting our high standards of safety and reliability,” the company said.