Nothing plans to bring the AI chatbot, ChatGPT to its best wireless earbuds and best phones, enabling you to talk to your device and get conversational answers in return. The feature will also allow you to use your Nothing phone or Nothing earbuds to summon the chatbot to answer questions or perform tasks.
The feature will be gradually rolled out via free software updates from today, April 18. The first Nothing devices to get ChatGPT smarts are its phones, starting with the Nothing Phone (2) followed by the Nothing Phone (1) and Nothing Phone (2a), in the next few weeks. It's expected to launch on the Nothing Ear and Nothing Ear (a) earbuds too "soon".
Is it good to talk to ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is the most popular consumer AI tool in the world right now, and while Nothing isn't the first firm to bring it to consumer products – the Volumio Integro music streamer used ChatGPT from its launch last summer – it's fair to say that Nothing has a much higher profile and larger user base.
It's also beaten many rivals to the punch. Google is expected to bring its own chatbot, Gemini, to Google Assistant-optimized phones and headphones too. Even OpenAI itself – creator of ChatGPT, is believed to be working with former Apple design guru Jonathan Ive, to make its own AI hardware.
We first tried the voice version of ChatGPT last year, and found that it was both more chatty and more knowledgeable than the likes of Apple's Siri. It's not as deeply integrated as Apple's assistant, but it's not as frustratingly limited either: I use Siri multiple times daily and I'm often frustrated by its often bone-headed responses.
You don't have to use ChatGPT as your default voice assistant on your Nothing device if you don't want to, but it should be an interesting feature to experiment with. So far, our various personal digital assistants have fallen some way short of delivering the kinds of friction-free computing we'd like them to, and of course there are obvious benefits, in terms of accessibility, for people who can't or don't want to use screen-based interfaces.
I'm not sure I'd ever ask ChatGPT for a bedtime story, which is one of OpenAI's suggestions, but I'd definitely like an assistant that's better at understanding more complex spoken commands, without just telling me to open my web browser. What's more, this looks like it's just the beginning. “By integrating ChatGPT with Nothing earbuds, including the new Nothing Ear and Ear (a), and with Nothing OS, we’ve taken our first steps towards change, and there’s more to come,” Nothing CEO Carl Pei says.
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