voice assistants - CybAI news

20 Sep

When You Call a Restaurant, You Might Be Chatting With an AI Host

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, chatbots, food, travel, voice assistants

A pleasant female voice greets me over the phone. “Hi, I’m an assistant named Jasmine for Bodega,” the voice says. “How can I help?”“Do you have patio seating,” I ask. Jasmine sounds a little sad as she tells me that unfortunately, the San Francisco–based Vietnamese restaurant doesn't have outdoor seating. But her sadness isn’t the result of her having a bad day. Rather, her tone is a feature, a setting.Jasmine is a member of a new, growing clan: the AI voice restaurant host. If you recently called up a restaurant in New York City, Miami, Atlanta, or San Francisco, chances…

11 Sep

This New Tech Puts AI In Touch with Its Emotions—and Yours

stp2y0 CommentsAIai lab, artificial intelligence, openai, voice assistants, voice recognition

A new “empathic voice interface” launched today by Hume AI, a New York–based startup, makes it possible to add a range of emotionally expressive voices, plus an emotionally attuned ear, to large language models from Anthropic, Google, Meta, Mistral, and OpenAI—portending an era when AI helpers may more routinely get all gushy on us.“We specialize in building empathic personalities that speak in ways people would speak, rather than stereotypes of AI assistants,” says Hume AI cofounder Alan Cowen, a psychologist who has coauthored a number of research papers on AI and emotion, and who previously worked on emotional technologies at…

16 Aug

What Is Gemini Live and How Do You Use It?

stp2y0 CommentsGenAIandroid, artificial intelligence, google, google gemini, phones, shopping, smartphones, voice assistants

Google launched a barrage of new hardware this week, from the Pixel 9 smartphones to new wireless earbuds. Underpinning all the shiny gadgetry is Google's Gemini artificially intelligent assistant. The chatbot launched earlier this year and is now the default assistant on the Pixel 9 series and is already available on millions of Android phones worldwide. But there's a new way to talk to this chatbot that's now rolling out: Gemini Live.This is Google's response to OpenAI's GPT-4o, a way to talk to the assistant naturally, much like a normal voice conversation between two humans (or at least, that's the…

13 Aug

I Used ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode. It’s Fun, and Just a Bit Creepy

stp2y0 CommentsGenAIartificial intelligence, chatbots, chatgpt, machine learning, openai, voice assistants

I leave ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode on while writing this article as an ambient AI companion. Occasionally, I’ll ask it to provide a synonym for an overused word, or some encouragement. Around half an hour in, the chatbot interrupts our silence and starts speaking to me in Spanish, unprompted. I giggle a bit and ask what’s going on. “Just a little switch up? Gotta keep things interesting,” says ChatGPT, now back in English.While testing Advanced Voice Mode as part of the early alpha, my interactions with ChatGPT’s new audio feature were entertaining, messy, and surprisingly varied. Though, it’s worth noting…