Conversations with ChatGPT will be more personal.

ChatGPT developer OpenAI announced yesterday (Monday) that the AI chatbot's new voice and image features will launch over the next two weeks.

Users who have paid for ChatGPT Plus subscriptions and enterprise users will soon be able to have back and forth conversations with ChatGPT. Those using the free version will still be limited to text input. Speech features will include a set of human voices generated by real voice actors. A new speech synthesis model combined with the open source speech recognition system Whisper supports this realistic conversation.

Open AI certainly showed its best footwork when it released a short sample of ChatGPT's new voice sounding like it was reading poetry or speech. It is a step up from the common AI voices that some websites offer to (robotically) read longer sentences, which are easier to listen to.

Having trouble finding the right words when talking to ChatGPT? The second major upgrade is the picture chat feature. If you momentarily forget that the plastic or metal tips of the shoelaces on your best running shoes are called aglets, but urgently need to ask ChatGPT if they are interchangeable, simply snap a picture and send it to chat. You can also talk about multiple images or use the drawing tool to direct the AI to a specific part of the image.

According to OpenAI, image processing is done by GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 models that can apply linguistic reasoning skills to a variety of image types, including photos, screenshots, and documents containing both text and images.

In their announcement about these new features, Open AI acknowledges that they may impersonate public figures and commit fraud.

"That's why we are using this technology for a specific use case: voice chat. The voice chat was created using voice actors we worked directly with," OpenAI stated.

As for image processing, ChatGPT's ability to analyze and speak about the person in a photo is intentionally limited.

The voice and image features will be rolled out to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users over the next two weeks. Voice will be available to iOS and Android users once they opt-in. The image feature will be available on all platforms.