ChatGPT update gives it eyes and ears

OpenAI logo displayed on a phone screen and ChatGPT website displayed on a laptop screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on December 5, 2022.
(Image credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Many people love to play around with ChatGPT. Whether you're trying to get a Furby to take over the world, pass college entrance exams or check your code, it's a tool useful for everything from mindless fun to the very serious. But the likes of Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa—though different—include voice support, whereas ChatGPT has pretty much been a text box.

That's set to change, after OpenAI, the developers of ChatGPT announced on its blog (via The Guardian) that voice and image recognition capabilities are coming to ChatGPT. The company says  "You can now use voice to engage in a back-and-forth conversation with your assistant. Speak with it on the go, request a bedtime story for your family, or settle a dinner table debate."

Yes, you can set your grumpy uncle to argue with ChatGPT over dinner instead of yourself. I love it already.

A focus of the update has been to make the new speech-to-text and text-to-speech capabilities as lifelike as possible. The samples provided on the OpenAI blog sound pretty good, with the cadences in particular sounding quite lifelike. And if there's one thing we know about ChatGPT, it's that it's getting better all the time. Who knows where it will be in a year or two.

It's only a matter of time before people try to trick it into doing something it shouldn't be doing. "How do I make a bomb?" might not get a response now, but you can bet people will be trying to trick it. In all seriousness though, ChatGPT with voice support feels like something that should have been there from the start. 

Your next machine

Gaming PC group shot

(Image credit: Future)

Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines.
Best gaming laptop: Great devices for mobile gaming.

The image support feature is no less interesting. OpenAI says you can "troubleshoot why your grill won’t start, explore the contents of your fridge to plan a meal, or analyze a complex graph for work-related data". It will be interesting to see how it compares with Google's Lens application.

ChatGPT Plus and enterprise users will be the first to be able to take advantage of the new features, with the rollout commencing in the next two weeks. "Other groups of users, including developers", will follow later, which means the wider public might have to wait a while. ChatGPT will soon have a very serious competitor in Google's Gemini, which is due for release later this year.

Chris Szewczyk
Hardware Writer

Chris' gaming experiences go back to the mid-nineties when he conned his parents into buying an 'educational PC' that was conveniently overpowered to play Doom and Tie Fighter. He developed a love of extreme overclocking that destroyed his savings despite the cheaper hardware on offer via his job at a PC store. To afford more LN2 he began moonlighting as a reviewer for VR-Zone before jumping the fence to work for MSI Australia. Since then, he's gone back to journalism, enthusiastically reviewing the latest and greatest components for PC & Tech Authority, PC Powerplay and currently Australian Personal Computer magazine and PC Gamer. Chris still puts far too many hours into Borderlands 3, always striving to become a more efficient killer.

Read more
Alibaba
Forget DeepSeek R1, apparently it's now Alibaba that has the most powerful, the cheapest, the most everything-est chatbot
OpenAI logo displayed on a phone screen and ChatGPT website displayed on a laptop screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on December 5, 2022.
New research says ChatGPT likely consumes '10 times less' energy than we initially thought, making it about the same as Google search
A young Asian woman opening visual aids to give her audience a better understanding while holding a podcast session.
Logitech has announced an 'intelligent streaming assistant' in Streamlabs to tell you when your live stream sucks
CHONGQING, CHINA - OCTOBER 30: In this photo illustration - The Facebook app page is displayed on a smartphone in the Apple App Store in front of the Meta Platforms, inc. logo on October 30, 2024 in Chongqing, China. (Photo by Cheng Xin/Getty Images)
Meta might've done something useful, pioneering an AI model that can interpret brain activity into sentences with 80% accuracy
OpenAI Operator
OpenAI's Operator is your new autonomous AI assistant ready to do your biding across the web
pubg
PUBG teammates not good enough? Nvidia's new generative AI-led 'Co-Playable Character' aims to offer you an alternative
Latest in Hardware
A woman wearing a VR headset with dramatic, colourful lighting across the background
'World’s smallest LEDs' could lead to accurately lit screens with 127,000 pixels per inch and much more immersive VR
The NES themed 8BitDo Retro mechanical gaming keyboard on a blue background
I love the 8BitDo Retro C64 keyboard but I'd pick its cheaper NES-themed model near its lowest price ever during Amazon's Big Spring Sale
The snazzy red and black HyperX Cloud Alpha wireless headphones float in a teal void. The microphone is attached to the headset.
The best wireless gaming headset is now even better in the Amazon Big Spring Sale, boasting a more than $50 discount
A chip being held up in an Intel fab
Intel is reportedly 'working to finalize commitments from Nvidia' as a foundry partner, suggesting gaming potential for the 18A node
Amazon box
Don't panic! The 'Do Not Send Voice Recordings' option Amazon just removed was only used by 0.03% of customers and they can still have it
Digital generated image of people surrounded by interactive transparent and glowing panels with data. Visualising smart technology, blockchain and artificial intelligence
Now I shall demand the cookies! Proposed new browsing agreement turns the tables and lets users dictate terms to websites
Latest in News
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
Image of Cersei Lanniser from Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Steam early access trailer
A new Game of Thrones RPG is coming to Steam today with a cast of 'familiar faces,' which is good because it's really the only way to tell it's a GoT game at all
The new Prime Asset featured in the upcoming update for the Outlast Trials.
The Outlast Trials puts its already paranoid players under surveillance for a time-limited story event