No, it’s not GPT-5, despite rumors to the contrary. Instead, OpenAI answered the arrival of the newly crowned most powerful large language model (LLM) from rival Anthropic today with a minor but potentially useful ChatGPT update for users: voiceover narration for the chatbot’s responses.
Available on the ChatGPT mobile, apps for iOS and Android, the new feature, dubbed “Read Aloud,” is activated by holding down on ChatGPT’s response and selecting the accordingly labeled option from a pop-up menu. You can see it in action in OpenAI’s video demo below:
OpenAI also said that the feature had begun “rolling” it out on the web, where it’s accessible by clicking a microphone icon below the chatbot output.
According to an email sent to VentureBeat by an OpenAI spokesperson: the feature “can come in handy when using ChatGPT on the go, in moments when you need to be hands-free, or in instances where hearing a message out loud helps you understand it better.”
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The new feature comes as OpenAI battles a new lawsuit from Elon Musk and rivals such as Anthropic and Google releasing LLMs that are more powerful than its flagship, though Google’s Gemini in particular has suffered a wave of negative press and criticisms of its guardrails on responses and racially confused image generations.
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