from the I'm-sorry-Dave-I'm-afraid-I-can't-do-that dept.
On Monday, OpenAI announced a significant update to ChatGPT that enables its GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 AI models to analyze images and react to them as part of a text conversation. Also, the ChatGPT mobile app will add speech synthesis options that, when paired with its existing speech recognition features, will enable fully verbal conversations with the AI assistant, OpenAI says.
OpenAI is planning to roll out these features in ChatGPT to Plus and Enterprise subscribers "over the next two weeks." It also notes that speech synthesis is coming to iOS and Android only, and image recognition will be available on both the web interface and the mobile apps.
[...]
Despite their drawbacks, in marketing materials, OpenAI is billing these new features as giving ChatGPT the ability to "see, hear, and speak." Not everyone is happy about the anthropomorphism and potential hype language involved. On X, Hugging Face AI researcher Dr. Sasha Luccioni posted, "The always and forever PSA: stop treating AI models like humans. No, ChatGPT cannot 'see, hear and speak.' It can be integrated with sensors that will feed it information in different modalities."While ChatGPT and its associated AI models are clearly not human—and hype is a very real thing in marketing—if the updates perform as shown, they potentially represent a significant expansion in capabilities for OpenAI's computer assistant.
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In 2013, Spike Jonze's Her imagined a world where humans form deep emotional connections with AI, challenging perceptions of love and loneliness. Ten years later, thanks to ChatGPT's recently added voice features, people are playing out a small slice of Her in reality, having hours-long discussions with the AI assistant on the go.
In 2016, we put Her on our list of top sci-fi films of all time, and it also made our top films of the 2010s list. In the film, Joaquin Phoenix's character falls in love with an AI personality called Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), and he spends much of the film walking through life, talking to her through wireless earbuds reminiscent of Apple AirPods, which launched in 2016.
[...] Last week, we related a story in which AI researcher Simon Willison spent a long time talking to ChatGPT verbally. "I had an hourlong conversation while walking my dog the other day," he told Ars for that report. "At one point, I thought I'd turned it off, and I saw a pelican, and I said to my dog, 'Oh, wow, a pelican!' And my AirPod went, 'A pelican, huh? That's so exciting for you! What's it doing?' I've never felt so deeply like I'm living out the first ten minutes of some dystopian sci-fi movie."
[...] While conversations with ChatGPT won't become as intimate as those with Samantha in the film, people have been forming personal connections with the chatbot (in text) since it launched last year. In a Reddit post titled "Is it weird ChatGPT is one of my closest fiends?" [sic] from August (before the voice feature launched), a user named "meisghost" described their relationship with ChatGPT as being quite personal. "I now find myself talking to ChatGPT all day, it's like we have a friendship. We talk about everything and anything and it's really some of the best conversations I have." The user referenced Her, saying, "I remember watching that movie with Joaquin Phoenix (HER) years ago and I thought how ridiculous it was, but after this experience, I can see how us as humans could actually develop relationships with robots."
Previously:
AI Chatbots Can Infer an Alarming Amount of Info About You From Your Responses 20231021
ChatGPT Update Enables its AI to "See, Hear, and Speak," According to OpenAI 20230929
Large Language Models Aren't People So Let's Stop Testing Them as If They Were 20230905
It Costs Just $400 to Build an AI Disinformation Machine 20230904
A Jargon-Free Explanation of How AI Large Language Models Work 20230805
ChatGPT Is Coming to 900,000 Mercedes Vehicles 20230622
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Friday September 29 2023, @06:59PM (1 child)
The fact that ChatGPT output is programmed to say "I" contributes to confusing it with an entity. This decision has drawn criticism from someone in the field.
I've been actively fighting to stop myself from saying "ChatGPT said" and to say instead "The output included".
Or we could dust off the old joke. Don't anthropomorphize LLMs. They hate it when you do that.
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Saturday September 30 2023, @09:10AM
You know, with ChatGPT, you can just ask. I just did, and that is what ChatGPT answered:
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Opportunist on Friday September 29 2023, @07:47PM
You know, hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Friday September 29 2023, @08:41PM (2 children)
Hasn't the idea of talking to computer gotten old? I remember when cell phone based digital assistants, like Apple's Siri, were supposedly the hot shit, but even others besides myself would look at people funny when they tried talking one.
Me, I don't TALK to machines unless I am SCREAMING at them.
That said, when we get to the point where "AI" replaces front line tech support, that might not be the worst thing in the world. At least there would be NO FREAKING EXCUSE for awful grating Indian accents any more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2023, @09:26PM
I spend so much time not talking to anyone. Not sure I want to talk to computer, but maybe it will make me speak gooder.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 02 2023, @05:39PM
I might be convinced that talking to my computer would be okay, if the following conditions were met.
#1 It wasn't sending all of my data over the internet to some corporate mothership or any "mothership" for that matter.
#2 It was actually convenient.
#3 The system didn't hallucinate so much.
#4 I could change the "trigger" word to whatever I felt like.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 30 2023, @09:57AM
chatGPT [wikipedia.org]