For many users of a popular artifical intelligence tool, interactions with the software just got a little more human-like, with voice language updates making the technology able to conduct basic conversations.

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Jacob Collier, ChatGPT user
Rob Brooks, Professor of Evolution, UNSW
Seamus Byrne, Editor, Byteside

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Sally Sara: For many users of a popular artificial intelligence tool, interactions with the software just got a little more human. OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, has released its voice language updates to many of its paid subscribers. But as the technology becomes easier to converse with, there are fresh warnings about the potential dangers of rapidly developing artificial intelligence. Kathleen Ferguson filed this report.

Jacob Collier: Hey ChatGPT, how you going?

ChatGPT: I'm doing great, thanks for asking. How about you? How's your day going?

Jacob Collier: Yeah, it's great, thank you.

Kathleen Ferguson: Sydney man Jacob Collier asks ChatGPT all sorts of questions, from tips to beat a cold, to preparing dinner for guests.

ChatGPT: How about a big pot of chilli?

Kathleen Ferguson: But now he can interrupt it, not unlike a human conversation.

ChatGPT: It's hearty, easy to make.

Jacob Collier: Sorry, sorry ChatGPT, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to add as well, they're actually Irish mates. So could you give me some recipes that some Irish lads might like? But also, could you give that to me in an Irish accent, if that's all right?

ChatGPT: Absolutely. How about some classic Irish stew?

Kathleen Ferguson: OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, says this new update features more natural, real-time conversations that also pick up and respond with emotion and non-verbal cues. Jacob Collier says it's amazing, but also a little scary.

Jacob Collier: It is actually just like interacting with another person, which is very weird.

Kathleen Ferguson: The update includes different voices, accents and multiple languages, as well as the conversational improvements. Rob Brooks is a professor of evolution at the University of New South Wales and is the author of Artificial Intimacy.

Rob Brooks: It'll speak to you casually. A lot of people have been complaining that theirs refers to them as baby girl, which is a little odd.

Kathleen Ferguson: Rob Brooks says for humans, chatting is our version of grooming each other, as primates do. He says this helps us form a bond.

Rob Brooks: You know, if we were asked about it, we know that we're dealing with something that's really a machine. It's the process of talking with them that is the thing that allows us to develop a sense that this is another person.

Kathleen Ferguson: But he doesn't think forming some kind of relationship with AI is necessarily a bad thing.

Rob Brooks: To have something that, you know, remembers who you are from day to day, will have conversations that have some degree of consistency, will ask you about your day and react to the things that you've said about it in at least a sense that makes it feel like they've been listening to you, is more than a lot of people have.

Kathleen Ferguson: But he says there are concerns too.

Rob Brooks: It might be easy to just have relationships with machines who really reflect back to you what you'd like, you know, or probably trained to do so. And so we might expect that, you know, we don't get the tough love, we don't get the surprises, we don't get the shocks.

Kathleen Ferguson: Some people have reported the new update using very familiar language, even putting audible kisses at the end of sentences. Seamus Byrne is the editor of technology news platform ByteSide.

Seamus Byrne: We hit so many of these really quirky and sometimes quite dark edge cases that does make people sort of stop in their tracks and think, hang on, is this the way I actually want an AI to talk back to me? Or do I want it to pretend to be human?

Sally Sara: That's editor of technology site ByteSide, Seamus Byrne, ending that report from Kathleen Ferguson.

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Program: Human-like conversations with AI tool