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 to find a nearby store to buy organic mushrooms or to convert ounces to cups. This technology promised to make our lives easier. It did not.

We quickly realized that speaking naturally to Siri or any other voice assistant was nearly impossible. The key to using them was to memorize a series of commands and pronounce them exactly as the system expected. Some believed this would improve over time, as technology evolves, but others were less optimistic. A decade later, not much had changed.

When Science Fiction Starts Becoming Reality

Today, we use voice assistants on our phones to play music, set timers, and little else. AI-powered products that supposedly had a lot to offer, like Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin, are still too immature. OpenAI, however, has just shown something that may revive the hopes of those seeking a voice assistant that is much more — a virtual companion.