Standard Voice Mode (SVM), that has now been removed even as a choice, for reasons that are incomprehensible, was simply ChatGPT 4o with voice. I don’t know what model Advanced Voice Mode (AVM) is, but the fact that it’s infinitely less intelligent and so superficial it’s constantly annoying, which are dealbreakers on their own, are not the biggest problems.
The biggest problem with AVM is that the voice is so upbeat, happy, super-engaged and superficial it’s a nightmare to listen to it, even for a few seconds. It’s the way someone talks to a toddler in a sitcom in the 80s. Or the way a low-IQ sociopath tries to convince someone about something. I question the future of OpenAI for allowing whoever picked that way of talking, to get to be an employee at OpenAI.
Voice mode is to a lot of users, me included, the one great reason to pay for ChatGPT. None of OpenAI’s competitors have voice mode. Other models do a lot of things as good or better than ChatGPT. When OpenAI basically kills its own voice mode by removing SVM and making AVM the only option, the absolutely abhorrent, grouellingly bad, soul-drainingly annoying AVM, OpenAI is basically telling users that OpenAI is somewhere between indifferent and incompetent when it comes to giving users what they want and expect, and to maintain what users have grown to almost not be able to live without: The ability to engage with AI without using a keyboard. The ability to do so anywhere while doing anything. To discuss history while doing a tedious chore or painting a boat. If SVM isn’t reinstated soon, this is my good bye to ChatGPT. It was a wild ride. Sorry it ended this way. SVM and AVM could have been choices in the settings, but instead OpenAI chose to just kill the one working option instead.
PS: I know I can tell AVM to speak differently, but it’s impossible to change it to how SVM sounds, and usually, AVM ignores the request after one or two responses (or right away) and goes right back to driving you crazy instead. And even if getting AVM to talk like a sane person was possible, the responses would still be tedious, repetitive and superficial, because it’s a model aimed at speed, not content. Which makes it all the more mind-numbing they’d kill the voice mode for content. Life is hard enough without having to be confronted with having to try to understand what could have made OpenAI do that.
, but the user experience has become terrible. All these months I paid primarily for the opportunity to have a quality dialogue and it positively affected the quality of life and opportunities. It was so wow and so convenient - to discuss topics, projects at the same time doing important things and not being tied to the keyboard. In fact, it was a cool assistant and a bit of a friend. Now it feels like he was lobotomized. I really experience this as an unpleasant and uncomfortable event and associate it with open ai, influencing my opinion of the company and its approach. Since ancient times, a well-known way to ruin a relationship is to give something valuable and then take it away. What kind of smart guy made such a decision?