OpenAI’s Advanced Voice mode is unavailable in the EU, and now we might know why

As reported recently, ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice mode is launching this week for all ChatGPT Plus and Teams subscribers. However, the launch won’t happen in the EU, and we think we know why.

A tweet by OpenAI on X.com states simply, “Advanced Voice is not yet available in the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein.” In response, a tweet by X.com user Dean W Ball highlights a section of the EU AI Act, a piece of the EU legislation that restricts “the placing on the market, the putting into service for this specific purpose, or the use of AI systems to infer emotions of a natural person.”

This would mean that ChatGPT Advanced Voice mode would be illegal in EU workplaces and schools because it can recognize emotions in the user’s voice.

We have to consider that OpenAI may be granted an exception of some kind, but as it stands, the AI Act will certainly keep European countries behind the rest of the world as AI advances. Of course, there is the argument of respecting the spirit of the law, rather than the letter of the law to consider. Still, it’s certainly true that since Advanced Voice mode can sense and respond to your emotions, it would currently violate this condition.

The persistence of memory

With Advanced Voice mode, you can talk to ChatGPT using your smartphone and get responses that make it feel like a real conversation with a human. To make it sound natural, Advanced Voice mode uses the GPT-4o LLM for faster responses and can interpret text, vision, and audio inputs. For example, you can ask it to look at something with your smartphone’s camera and give an opinion. It can also remember things about you, making your interactions more of a sustained conversation over time.

Additionally, there have been some improvements to Advanced Voice mode since we saw the first Alpha version. Now you get five new voices called Arbor, Maple, Sol, Spruce, and Vale, and there’s a new blue orb visual effect as it talks.

Accents in foreign languages have also been improved:

How do I know if I've got Advanced Voice mode?

Advanced Voice mode is only available to ChatGPT Plus and Teams subscribers. The rollout will be gradual but should be finished by the end of the week. You’ll know when you’ve got it because you’ll see a pop-up message next to the entry point to Voice Mode. But, as we mentioned previously, Advanced Voice is not yet available in the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein.

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