OpenAI releases new AI voice models with customizable speaking styles

OpenAI has released a new generation of audio models that let developers customize how their AI assistants speak. The update includes improved speech recognition and the ability to control an AI's speaking style through simple text commands.

According to OpenAI, their new gpt-4o-transcribe and gpt-4o-mini-transcribe models show lower error rates than previous Whisper systems when converting speech to text. The company says these models perform better in challenging conditions, such as heavy accents, noisy environments, and varying speech speeds.

The most notable feature comes from the new gpt-4o-mini-tts text-to-speech model. The system responds to style instructions like "speak like a pirate" or "tell this as a bedtime story," allowing developers to fine-tune how their AI voices communicate. These capabilities are built on OpenAI's GPT-4o and GPT-4o-mini architectures, which handle multiple types of media input and output.

According to OpenAI, the improved performance is due to specialized pre-training of audio datasets for more nuanced speech understanding, more efficient model distillation techniques, and expanded use of reinforcement learning in speech recognition. The company implemented "self-play" methods to simulate natural conversation patterns.