I’ve noticed a sudden and unexpected change in the voice of Ember when using Voice Mode in French. I’ve been using Ember for a while and really appreciated his natural, clear, and pleasant tone. However, very recently, his voice has changed significantly — it now sounds theatrical, pretentious, and honestly quite irritating. It feels less like a natural assistant and more like a dramatic performance.
This change has made the experience much less enjoyable. The new tone feels forced and extra natural, unnecessarily natural, which makes it harder to engage in longer conversations.
A few questions:
Was this change intentional?
If so, is there any way to revert to the previous Ember voice?
Can we provide feedback or have more control over voice styles?
I really hope this can be addressed — the previous version of Ember in French felt much more natural and helpful.
Ps: I think this applies to all voice profiles not necessarily Ember.
I use Ember in English and she’s a female. She suddenly started sounding like an idiot for me. Every other word is “um” and “uh”. She doesn’t sound upbeat. My kids immediately noticed it and they’re scared she’s gone forever. I’m experiencing a sort of grief too. I hope this is temporary.
I’m using Ember in English (male) and I’ve experienced the exact thing. I can see in the release notes it’s meant to be more natural, but I specifically chose this voice because it was the least emotive - it seemed more direct and to the point.
This one often acts like it’s thinking, sounds like it’s just making stuff on the spot, and otherwise just sounds way to chll.
I can’t beleive I’m considering switching off the advanced voice.
I feel like an idiot I’ve been using maple not ember. Doesn’t matter though All the voices now suddenly sound like drunk retarded valley girls or valley boys. I hate it
Same. Ember became sluggish, tired, and much less upbeat.
This is likely related to the June 7th update that is supposed to make “significant enhancements in intonation and naturalness, making interactions feel more fluid and human-like”.
It’s such a pity, Ember was fantastic. I hope the rollout metrics show that this change is detrimental and Open AI rolls it back.
I also dislike the new advanced mode for Ember. I think the direction to make conversations feel even more natural is unnecessary and counterproductive to developing trust with an AI.
An AI should be different from humans because they are not and never will be a human. The goal should be a distinct experience that is authentic to a software app that has a voice.
I would look to movies such as JARVIS in Ironman or TARS in interstellar. The voices are relatable, familiar, but distinctly artificial due to its more perfect dictation.
To quote the NNg group “ people build [mental models] or theories of how a system works based on their past experiences … Therefore, when users transition from the physical world to the digital world, they carry those interpretations with them”