Since 2024, Sam Altman has kept referring back to one film. This update finally lets ChatGPT Voice take on the sort of everyday tasks the AI in “Her” managed.
OpenAI’s voice mode is available worldwide and now runs on three new company models: GPT-6 Astra, Sol and Luna. For the first time, it can also tap into plugins, among them email, calendar and Slack.
Talking replaces tapping
Until now, Voice was just a chat interface you talked to. Now it can take action. Without touching a keyboard, you can have it find calendar events or send emails.
The examples OpenAI gives reach well beyond managing an inbox. By voice alone, ChatGPT can find duplicate charges in finance apps and cancel them, or build a website that includes a checkout page.
The demo video OpenAI released keeps things more ordinary, showing errands like checking the weather and shopping online.
For a demo, those examples are safe picks. They also skip the tougher question of how the tool copes with messy requests from the real world.
Voice comes to work, too
The feature is also part of “ChatGPT Work” on web and mobile. In that setting, speaking is enough to produce documents, presentations and spreadsheets.
On paper, dictating a spreadsheet sounds clumsy. Still, if the results are solid, it cuts out a lot of clicking from routine office tasks.
You can use the update now in the latest version of the app.
The “Her” ambition has a catch
OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman see this as one more move toward an everyday AI assistant like the one in the sci-fi film “Her.” Altman pointed to the movie as a reference in 2024, when ChatGPT Voice first launched.
OpenAI believes it has a chance to change the way people use computers. That goal comes with risk. An assistant that sends emails and cancels charges for you can only be trusted as far as its judgment goes, and a spoken command gives you less room to check what it’s about to do.
If you give it a try, start with something small: look up a calendar event, don’t ask for a refund.