ChatGPT Rolls Out Voice Chat Feature to All Free Users on iOS and Android

OpenAI has been in the news for the turmoil that followed the ouster of Sam Altman as CEO on Friday. Since then, nearly all of OpenAI employees had threatened to quit and demanded the board’s resignation. The AI firm appointed former Twitch boss Emmett Shear as new CEO, and Altman was hired by Microsoft to lead AI research at the company. However, following talks with the OpenAI board, Altman has now agreed to return as CEO to the company he co-founded. Amid the chaos, OpenAI has continued updating its most popular product. The company announced on Wednesday that ChatGPT with voice would be available to all users of the app for free. The voice conversations feature was earlier rolled out to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise subscribers.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI announced that voice support had been added to the ChatGPT app for all free users. “Download the app on your phone and tap the headphones icon to start a conversation,” the post added. In its post, OpenAI included a video of the working feature, conversing with a ChatGPT user.

Gadgets 360 can confirm that voice support has been rolled out to the ChatGPT app on both iOS and Android smartphones. The feature appears as a headphone icon on the bottom right of the chat window. After tapping the icon, users get a ‘Chat with voice’ introduction screen, which includes information about the voice conversations feature. It also clarifies that all voice chats will be saved as transcriptions in chat history. Audio clips of chats, however, are not stored. The app also auto detects the language. Users can also select a preferred language in Settings for more accurate voice detection.

Chat with voice feature on ChatGPT for iOS

The ChatGPT app then lets users chose a preferred voice for the feature from an option of five voices. After providing microphone permission, the Chat with voice feature is set to use, allowing users to have free-flowing spoken conversations with ChatGPT. Keep in mind though that users on the free plan cannot get real time updates as they do from voice assistants like Siri or Google Assistant as the app is restricted to accessing available data till January 2022.

Voice conversation first rolled out to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise members in September. Back then, OpenAI had said that it had worked with professional voice actors to offer the new feature. The chat with voice feature on the ChatGPT app answers questions by converting spoken queries into text that can be understood by the chatbot. Responses are then converted into audio format using the company’s new text-to-speech (TTS) technology.

ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise customers also get the added functionality of browsing the web and getting real-time data via ChatGPT, beyond its information cutoff date. OpenAI has said that the feature would also be expanded to all users soon.