You Can Now Try ChatGPT’s Voice Chat Feature for Free
You may pay a monthly premium to use ChatGPT, but the free version can often handle more than enough for you to experience everything generative AI has to offer. Without paying, you can take advantage of the OpenAI GPT-3.5 model and ask ChatGPT to provide interesting, fun, useful or important results. And now you can literally ask it out loud.
You see, while the free version is useful, there are more great features hidden in the company’s $20 per month ChatGPT Plus plan. By not paying, you lose the more powerful GPT-4 model, plugin support , and ChatGPT Internet connectivity, among other things.
Fortunately, even in the midst of the company’s crisis , OpenAI managed to roll out to all users one feature that was previously only available in Plus: voice chat.
ChatGPT voice chat is available to everyone
OpenAI introduced voice chat for ChatGPT Plus users back in September. This feature replaces ChatGPT’s text-based interface with something more like a voice assistant: when you speak to ChatGPT, you’ll see a tone respond in a similar way. The assistant will automatically recognize when you’ve finished speaking and switch to a thought bubble interface to answer your question or request.
The company always planned to bring voice chat to free users, and although it took a couple of months, the feature is finally here:
Voice chat doesn’t really do anything more (or anything) than text-based ChatGPT, but it does make interacting with a chatbot more natural. Or at least brings us closer to the real world of Her situation.
How to use ChatGPT voice chat
Note : I use ChatGPT Plus for voice chat, so there may be some differences between my experience and what is presented in the free version. However, here are instructions on how to use it.
This feature is only available on the official ChatGPT app for iOS and Android , not the web app, so be sure to download the app to your phone first. Once you’ve opened the app and set everything up, start a new chat and look for the headphone icon in the bottom right corner of the screen. Voice chat will be available on Tuesday, so you’ll see it after you update the app.
Tap the headphones and you’ll see a pop-up window describing the “voice chat” feature. To continue, click Select Voice . You have five different options: Juniper, Breeze, Cove, Amber and Skye, who looks a lot like Scarlett Johansson. (Someone at OpenAI really likes it .)
Once you choose your voice and continue, you’re in! By default, ChatGPT immediately listens to your voice and waits for you to finish speaking before continuing. However, you can hold the microphone to record your question or request and then release it to let ChatGPT respond.
ChatGPT will save a transcript of your voice chat in the main chat, so when you exit the voice chat, you will see your conversation as usual. You’ll be able to differentiate between voice chat transcripts and text conversations by the microphone and waveform icons next to your ChatGPT prompts and responses, respectively.