OpenAI delays launch of ChatGPT 4o voice mode; chatbot app now available for Macs

Last month, OpenAI launched the new generation bot ChatGPT’s GPT-4o (generative artificial intelligence, Gen. AI). The letter “o” stands for “omni” and refers to the bot’s ability to understand queries in any combination of text, images and audio and respond using the same media combination.

The demo of GPT-4o’s voice mode was not only a huge hit with those present at the event, but also received a lot of positive feedback on social media platforms worldwide. The chatbot’s voice and tone were eerily similar to that of humans.

And the exchange of greetings between the demonstrator and the GPT-4o was completely natural, like a conversation between two normal people. Film fans were reminded of the science fiction classic Herwhere the protagonist Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with the virtual assistant Samantha (voice: Scarlett Johansson).

GPT-4o was made available to most devices soon after the announcement and the voice response mode was scheduled to be released in June. However, the release of the feature was delayed by a month as the company needed more time to test and refine it to provide the best user experience.

OpenAI also said it is expanding its cloud infrastructure to support millions of user requests and deliver responses faster and with less delay.

“We had planned to roll this out as an alpha version to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users in late June, but we still need a month to reach our launch threshold. For example, we are improving the model’s ability to detect and reject certain content. We are also working to improve the user experience and prepare our infrastructure to scale to millions while maintaining real-time responses,” OpenAI said.

Next month, GPT-4o’s advanced voice mode will be released to a small number of users with ChatGPT Plus subscriptions. And by the end of September, it will be made available to all Premium subscribers.

In a related development, OpenAI has finally released the long-awaited ChatGPT app for Mac devices on the Apple App Store.

Currently, the new ChatGPT app supports Mac devices with M1 silicon (or newer versions). And they should have the latest operating system, macOS 14.

OpenAI plans to release ChatGPT for Windows devices later this year, most likely in the fall (September).

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