OpenAI Brings Us Closer Than Ever to ‘Her’: Its New Voice Model Will Accompany (and Perhaps Enchant) Us

GPT-4o is coming to ChatGPT, taking the renowned chatbot to the next level. It will be capable of doing human-like things such as laughing, singing, and expressing surprise.

Movies often allow us to glimpse future technological advancements that might eventually become reality. ‘A Trip to the Moon,’ inspired by the literary works of Jules Verne, spoke of space travel in the early 1900s. ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ released in 1968, introduced the concept of a supercomputer with artificial intelligence (AI) capable of reasoning and communicating in natural language with humans. More recently, in 2013, Joaquin Phoenix portrayed Theodore Twombly in ‘Her.’ This film, written and directed by Spike Jonze, tells the story of a lonely man with little social life who begins interacting with a virtual assistant named Samantha. She has several unusual characteristics for a machine, such as a good sense of humor, empathy, desire, and a growing need for self-discovery. Theodore ends up falling in love with her.

When ‘Her’ hit theaters, the closest thing we had to an AI voice assistant was Siri. Apple’s advertisements presented this feature as incredibly innovative and, above all, intuitive. We could see Samuel L. Jackson asking an iPhone 4s in natural language…