ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has released a new AI model called GPT-4o, capable of realistic voice conversation and able to interact across text and image. This is OpenAI’s latest move to stay ahead in a race to dominate the emerging technology.

New audio capabilities enable users to speak to ChatGPT and obtain real-time responses with no delay as well as interrupt ChatGPT while it is speaking, both hallmarks of realistic conversations that AI voice assistants have found challenging, the OpenAI researchers have showed at a recent live-stream event.

“It feels like AI from the movies.... Talking to a computer has never felt really natural for me; now it does,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has written in a blog post.

Microsoft-backed OpenAI faces growing competition and pressure to expand the user base of ChatGPT, its popular chatbot product that has wowed the world with its ability to produce human-like written content and top-notch software code.

At the livestream event, OpenAI researchers showed off ChatGPT’s new voice assistant capabilities. In one demo, ChatGPT used its vision and voice capabilities to talk a researcher through solving a math equation on a sheet of paper.

In another demo, researchers showed the GPT-4o model’s capability of real-time language translation.

OpenAI’s demonstrations verged on science-fiction (sci-fi), with ChatGPT and its interlocutor at one point engaging in coquettish banter. The OpenAI researcher told the chatbot that he was in a great mood because he was demonstrating “how useful and amazing you are”.

ChatGPT responded: “Oh, stop it! You’re making me blush!”