ChatGPT Voice Now Offers Enhanced Privacy for Background Conversations

ChatGPT experienced an outage early Tuesday morning, which has since been resolved as OpenAI identified the cause of the disruption. This marks the second outage in recent days, raising concerns about potential routine interruptions, especially as ChatGPT could integrate with AI services in iOS 18.

In more positive news, OpenAI has introduced a new setting for voice chats on iPhone and Android. The "Background Conversations" feature allows users to continue chatting with ChatGPT while using other apps or with the screen off. This feature, which can be toggled on or off, was added following the support for voice conversations introduced last November, before the GPT-4 multimodal upgrade.

When enabled, the setting lets ChatGPT respond even when the app isn't in the foreground, with replies showing as notifications. This is indicated by a Live Activity on the iPhone's Dynamic Island. However, the conversation must be manually ended by returning to the app.

If disabled, voice chats will end once the ChatGPT app is closed. The feature is off by default, but can be managed by going to the app settings under your profile and finding the "Background Conversations" toggle.

In testing, the feature works as intended, keeping conversations active across different apps or when the screen is off. Despite concerns, this doesn't pose a major privacy issue as ChatGPT won't listen to everything but will respond to prompts until the chat is manually ended.

Looking ahead, voice interaction is expected to be a significant multitasking tool for Apple devices with future Siri upgrades, allowing seamless voice commands while ensuring privacy.