OpenAI fans criticize ChatGPT voice mode delay as company points to behind-the-scenes issues

A big delay.

Date with the catastrophe

There is sadness in the busy world of AI as legions of lonely OpenAI fans have just been transferred from, well, “you.”

The company first introduced the expressive—and flirtatious?—voice mode assistant for ChatGPT in May, which could hold lively conversations in real time and even read facial expressions.

By the timeThe feature was expected to be introduced in an alpha version. check available to a select group of paying ChatGPT Plus subscribers until June.

But now an announcement on X (formerly Twitter) from OpenAI says that Voice Mode will need another month “to reach our launch level,” with a wider rollout to all Plus subscribers set to happen in the fall – a move that has sparked even more controversy surrounding the AI ​​assistant.

say no

Some of the reasons given for the delay are boilerplate. OpenAI said vaguely that it is “improving the user experience” and preparing its infrastructure to handle the coming millions of users who will eventually use voice mode.

Another reason for the creep, however, may raise eyebrows: OpenAI is also, cryptically put, in the process of “improving the model’s ability to recognize and reject certain content.”

This sounds like Voice Mode is prone to bad behavior and could represent a much deeper security issue—or “alignment problem,” in the AI ​​industry’s euphemistic parlance—that plagues chatbots in general when they spit out inappropriate or dangerous content either unprompted or at a user’s explicit request. (We’re also not ruling out the possibility that people are just horny for it.)

Problematic project

Whatever the reasons, fans aren’t happy. Some have called the delay a “rug-puller” after paying for a ChatGPT Plus subscription after OpenAI originally promised that voice mode would launch “in the coming weeks.” Others have speculated that the promising demos we saw in May were misleadingly exaggerated — which wouldn’t be unprecedented.

But in general, most have simply derided OpenAI’s failure to ship a product. Its competitor Anthropic, meanwhile, has just released a groundbreaking new update to its chatbot Claude, now Claude 3.5.

This is an unenviable position for OpenAI. Just last month, the company was already hit by a controversy over one of the voices for Voice Mode. Many found it to bear an uncanny resemblance to actress Scarlett Johansson’s role in the film “Her,” in which she plays a chirpy AI assistant who a lonely man falls in love with. OpenAI removed the voice – but shortly before Johansson publicly criticized the company.

With this latest delay, which appears to have nothing to do with the PR disaster, OpenAI has only exposed itself to further scrutiny and increased the disappointment of its fans.

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