Talking to ChatGPT for the first time is a surreal experience
Enlarge / Putting the "chat" in ChatGPT (credit: Getty Images)
In May, when OpenAI first demonstrated ChatGPT-4o's coming audio conversation capabilities, I wrote that it felt like we were "on the verge of something... like a sea change in how we think of and work with large language models." Now that those "Advanced Voice" features are rolling out widely to ChatGPT subscribers, we decided to ask ChatGPT to explain, in its own voice, how this new method of interaction might impact our collective relationship with large language models.
That chat, which you can listen to and read a transcript of below, shouldn't be treated as an interview with an official OpenAI spokesperson or anything. Still, it serves as a fun way to offer an initial test of ChatGPT's live conversational chops.
Even in this short introductory "chat," we were impressed by the natural, dare-we-say human cadence and delivery of ChatGPT's "savvy and relaxed" Sol voice (which reminds us a bit of '90s Janeane Garofalo). Between ChatGPT's ability to give quick responses—offered in in milliseconds rather than seconds—and convincing intonation, it's incredibly easy to fool yourself into thinking you're speaking to a conscious being rather than what is, as ChatGPT says here, "still just a computer program processing information, without real emotions or consciousness."