Screens Obsolete? OpenAI's Audio AI Bet
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Jaden Schaefer.
What is OpenAI's bet on audio AI about?
Today, we're talking about the fact that OpenAI is betting the farm on audio AI. This is way beyond chat GPTs, just getting a nicer voice. There's a bunch of, there's a new report from the information that says that the company has spent the last two months consolidating engineering product research teams to rebuild its AI audio models. And they're doing this from the ground up. This is all ahead of an audio first personal device, which we're expecting to come out in roughly a year from now. There is a lot going on in the story and a lot is at stake. So we're going to be covering all of that on the podcast today.
How is OpenAI restructuring its audio AI teams?
If you want to try the latest AI audio models from OpenAI or from Eleven Labs, which in my opinion is the best at the moment, I would recommend going and checking out AIbox.ai. I have a playground that lets you access over 40 of the top models, everything from OpenAI, Meta, Google, DeepSeek, tons more. All these audio models, they're on there and you can try them out for $20 a month on my own startup, AIbox.ai. I'll leave a link in the description if you want to go try that out. This big focus that we're seeing from OpenAI right now to push audio AI, I think shifts or essentially is kind of showing what's happening in the broader tech world. Right now, screens are starting to fade into the background.
They're not, you know, the trendiest thing. Most of these, a lot of these Silicon Valley startups and venture capitalists A lot of people are talking about how screen time or screen addiction is bad. And so it feels like people are kind of pushing away from screens. And with that, audio is kind of taking the forefront. It feels like this is the response. There's, of course, smart speakers that have already normalized voice assistance. And those are in over a third of U.S.
What new audio-first personal device is OpenAI developing?
households. Meta recently added, of course, a feature to their Ray-Ban smart glasses. They use a five microphone array that essentially isolates a voice in a noisy environment. So if you're talking to someone in a bar or at You know, in some sort of noisy store or market and you look at them, it has these five microphones, isolates their voice and in your ear will amplify just their voice. So effectively, it is, you know, turning your head into a directional microphone. Google also started testing audio overviews in June, which is, you know, covering the search results into conversational summaries. And Tesla, of course, is weaving XAI's grok into its vehicles to create a voice driven assistant that can help you when you're doing navigation or even like climate control, that kind of stuff.
You could just talk to it and say, hey, like, you know, turn the heat up, etc. So big tech, I think right now is not the only one that is betting really big on audio. There is a collection of startups that are chasing the same idea. There's, you know, some of them that have, you know, been successful and others that have it feels like, failed extraordinarily, including Humane's AI pin, which burned through hundreds of millions of dollars before essentially becoming a bit of a cautionary tale for screenless wearables. There's, of course, the Friend AI pendant. This is a necklace that you wear around your neck. It got famous because the CEO bought Friend.com for like $6 million and basically blew their entire fundraising round on the domain name.
And with that, their necklace is essentially just sitting there and it records your life and it keeps you company. And, you know, some people are curious about it. A lot of people are worried about privacy concerns. You know, it's a crazy product. So I think right now there's at least two more companies, including Sandbar and another that's led by the Pebble founder, Eric, which if anyone remembers Pebble, this was like the biggest Kickstarter of all time. Back in the day, I think they raised like $10 million for a smartwatch. This is before the Apple Watch came out. Very cool, novel idea. And they are developing an AI-powered ring.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:02
2
What is OpenAI's bet on audio AI about?
0:02–0:33
3
How is OpenAI restructuring its audio AI teams?
0:33–1:33
4
What new audio-first personal device is OpenAI developing?
1:33–4:41
5
Why are screens becoming less popular in tech?
4:41–10:05