Now is the time to try ChatGPT Voice

OpenAI just made it free

Mignon Fogarty
November 22, 2023

Today’s newsletter is quick because I want to tell you right away about ChatGPT Voice becoming free. If you get together with family for Thanksgiving, it would probably impress the heck out of your grandma.

On today’s quest:

ChatGPT Voice is now free
News: Amazon cuts Alexa jobs, Altman back in as OpenAI CEO
Party tricks

Tip: Try ChatGPT Voice. It’s fun … and now it’s also free

The story about ChatGPT making the voice feature free hit my inbox 30 minutes after I was talking with my husband over coffee about how much I love this feature, but that I’ve hesitated to write about it because most people probably don’t have it. But now you do!

I’ve been surprised how much I use it because I haven’t liked voice interactions with Siri and Alexa. But with all the OpenAI drama the last few days making me wonder if the company might go under, I found myself thinking, “I hope I don’t lose my voice assistant” — which surprised me every time because it’s not the most useful feature. But it is the most fun and friendly feature, and I guess deep down I’m as frivolous as the next person.

I use it for simple, low-stakes searches when I’m not at my computer, like when I’m on a walk wondering about the timing of peak monarch butterfly season and when I’m lying in bed wondering why cats like to sit in boxes.

To use it, download the ChatGPT app on your phone, tap the headphones icon, and ask your question. (Android, iOS)

Party Tricks

Keeping with the “your family will think this is fun” theme, I’ve talked about ways you can tell AI tools to write in different tones, and Peter B. Steiger posted this funny example in the Grammar Girl Facebook group:

PROMPT: Explain subjunctive mood in the style of a drunk fraternity partygoer.

RESPONSE: Alright, dude, so like, you know when you wanna talk about something that's not really, like, for sure happening? That's when you bust out the subjunctive mood, man! It's like, "Yo, I wish I were at that sick party," or "If I were a superhero, I'd totally fly, bro!" It's all about unreal stuff, you feel me? Like, wishes, hypotheticals, or stuff that ain't real but you're talking about it anyway. So, when you wanna express something that's, like, not really happening or might not happen, that's when you throw in that subjunctive mood, man! Cheers to grammar, am I right?

Funny, and it’s also not wrong: The subjunctive. Cheers to grammar, am I right?

News

Amazon lays off ‘several hundred’ from Alexa division

This new round of layoffs, described in an internal memo, follows a much larger round of layoffs in 2022 that also included people in the Echo and Alexa divisions (but also many other areas). GeekWire reports that the move is “part of part of a broader shift in priorities and a focus on developing new forms of artificial intelligence.” It’s hard not to see this as a Amazon scrambling as ChatGPT Voice makes Alexa look like the Palm Pilot.

Sam Altman back as CEO of OpenAI

I’m starting to feel like a cranky grandpa as I want to shout, “In or out! Pick one!” After news yesterday that ousted CEO Sam Altman was joining Microsoft as head of a new AI project (and might oversee the OpenAI relationship … what a delicious detail), the news this morning is that he’s back as the CEO of OpenAI. I heard someone describe the current events as “Real Housewives of Silicon Valley,” and it sure fits. I’m starting to not care, except that I want OpenAI to stay in business since I’d miss the voice feature and the custom GPTs I trained on my own materials (which I’ll write about in the future … they still aren’t free).

What is AI sidequest?

Using AI isn’t my main job, and it probably isn’t yours either. I’m Mignon Fogarty, and Grammar Girl is my main gig, but I haven’t seen a technology this transformative since the development of the internet, and I want to learn about it. I bet you do too.

So here we are! Sidequesting together.

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^{Written by a human.}