I was recently I was waiting for my nails to dry and didn’t want to get the paint on, when I realized this would be the perfect opportunity to try out some voice-only AI features. Silicon Valley car owners have long conversations with ChatGPT while driving, and I wanted to try hands-free chatting before meeting with two OpenAI product leaders later that day.
While chatbots can be useful for brainstorming, talking to ChatGPT was like collaborating with an overcaffeinated friend who can’t stand a second of silence. I was valiantly fighting the AI tool to finish a single, complete thought before it interrupted me.
Me: Last year I wrote a newsletter called AI Unlocked for our readers. In that newsletter, I…
ChatGPT: Tell me more about your newsletter and what specific question you have in mind related to it.
Just a couple of minutes into the experiment, I experienced synthetic speech-induced stage fright and begged the chatbot for more time, asking it to give me a second to think between sentences. The chatbot encouraged me to slow down, although the rapid cadence of its responses remained unchanged.
When I mentioned the anxiety I experienced while chatting with AI to Joanne Jang, ChatGPT’s model behavior lead, she explained that it’s an aspect of the user experience that the company is trying to fix within the AI model. “In our ideal world, the model would be a little better at detecting when you’re done. So if you’re not done with your sentence, then they won’t exclude you,” Jang says. “This is something we are trying to resolve and we know it is an issue for our users.”
With the caveat that you shouldn’t do this while driving, he suggested a simple solution for users: simply tap the screen. As long as you have a free finger, you can tap and hold the big circle in the center of the app during conversations with ChatGPT. Keep your finger there while talking to avoid interruptions from the robot; let it go when you are focused on your vocal message.
While Nick Turley, ChatGPT product lead, said he prefers to use the back-and-forth chat feature, available in the app by tapping the headset icon, he recommends another audible interaction method for users who need more time and want to slow down. things. a little, or that they simply find the default pace of the AI conversation uncomfortable.
In the mobile app, tap the microphone icon next to the headphones. Say what you want to use in your message, and then tap the blue area to stop recording when it’s done. ChatGPT will convert the audio to text and add it to the request field. After pressing Send, listen to ChatGPT’s response by holding down output and then selecting Read out loud. This slowed down process is a nice way to vocally interact with the AI tool at your own pace, for those who might get stressed by the service’s quick verbal responses.
