Introducing GPT-Live

We’re launching GPT‑Live, a new generation of voice models that make talking with AI feel much more like having a real conversation.

GPT‑Live is built on a full-duplex architecture, meaning it can listen and speak at the same time. During conversations, GPT‑Live can show it’s paying attention with phrases like “mhmm” or “yeah”, engage in quick back-and-forth, or just stay quiet when you need a moment to think. The result is a voice experience that is refreshingly easy to talk to.

GPT‑Live is also our smartest voice model yet. For questions that require web search, deeper reasoning, or more complex work, it delegates to our latest frontier model behind the scenes and brings the result back into the conversation when it’s ready. While it works, GPT‑Live can keep talking with you and maintain the flow of conversation. At launch, GPT‑Live will use GPT‑5.5 in the background. As we release new frontier models, we’ll continuously update the model used by GPT‑Live.

These advances power a new ChatGPT Voice experience that is more intelligent and natural to use. Over time, we believe this research will also unlock the ability to use voice for increasingly complex, longer-running, and more agentic work.

We’re beginning to roll out two versions of GPT‑Live – GPT‑Live‑1 and GPT‑Live‑1 mini – to ChatGPT users globally today. We also plan to bring them to the API soon, and developers and enterprises can sign up to be notified using this form.

Entering a new era of human-AI interaction

Our vision is to enable truly natural human–AI interaction: a world where collaborating with AI feels as fluid and responsive as working with another person, while reasoning and complex task execution happen seamlessly in the background.

Previous approaches

Older generations of voice AI systems brought us closer to that vision, but with important tradeoffs.

Cascaded voice systems

Cascaded voice systems rely on a series of models acting one after another to process each turn. The original ChatGPT Voice chained three models together: a speech-to-text model to transcribe your speech, a large language model to produce a response, and a text-to-speech model to convert it back into speech. This approach enabled us to talk to frontier AI models for the first time, but the complexity came at a cost: information could be lost across models, and responses were slow and stilted.

Turn-based voice models

Turn-based voice models like ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode processed and generated audio within a single model, reducing latency and making conversations smoother — but they still operated through discrete turns. The model had to wait for the user to stop speaking before responding, resulting in rigid back-and-forth. In addition, because turn detection is based on silence, even a brief pause or background noise could be mistaken for the end of turn — causing the model to interrupt at unnatural times.

Our new approach

GPT‑Live addresses these limitations through two architectural changes.

Continuous interaction

First, we built GPT‑Live for continuous interaction using a full-duplex architecture**. **Instead of processing a sequence of separate messages, GPT‑Live continuously processes input while generating output. The model can therefore make interaction decisions many times per second: whether to speak, continue listening, pause, interrupt, or invoke a tool.

This allows the model to engage in more natural back-and-forth, maintain a better sense of time, and even perform live translation.

Delegation for deeper work

Second, we decoupled GPT‑Live — which handles continuous interaction — from deeper work. When a question requires search, reasoning, or more agentic capabilities, GPT‑Live can delegate the task to another model like GPT‑5.5. This allows it to keep the conversation going, even as it handles multiple tasks in the background.

This architectural change also allows GPT‑Live to continuously use the latest models and agents, combining frontier intelligence with natural interaction.

Evaluations

We built new human evaluations to measure pleasantness and the flow of conversation. In these head-to-head comparisons, GPT‑Live‑1 and GPT‑Live‑1 mini are strongly preferred over Advanced Voice Mode in matched 5–10 minute conversations that measure overall preference, turn-taking, interruptions, conversational flow, and how natural each interaction felt.

GPQA: GPT‑Live‑1 substantially outperforms Advanced Voice Mode on GPQA, which tests expert-level scientific reasoning across biology, chemistry, and physics.
BrowseComp: GPT‑Live‑1 shows strong gains over Advanced Voice Mode on BrowseComp, which tests agentic web search and the ability to find difficult-to-locate information.
τ³-Voice Telecom (internal variant)**: GPT‑Live‑1 outperforms Advanced Voice Mode on τ³-Voice Telecom, which tests voice agents on realistic, multi-turn telecom support tasks.

A new ChatGPT Voice experience

Each week, more than 150 million people talk to ChatGPT using features like Voice and Dictation. They use it to get hands-free everyday help, to practice languages, tell bedtime stories, or just chat during their commute.

Starting today, when you tap the Voice button to talk with ChatGPT, you’ll get an improved experience powered by GPT‑Live—with more natural conversations, smarter answers, better listening, and visual responses.

More natural conversations

Talking with ChatGPT should now feel much more like a real conversation. You can interrupt with a question, pause to gather your thoughts, or ask ChatGPT to slow down. It naturally acknowledges what you’re saying with phrases like “mhmm” or “got it,” so you know it’s following along. We’ve also remastered the nine distinct voices in ChatGPT for GPT‑Live.

Smarter answers

ChatGPT Voice can now draw on our latest frontier models, giving you smarter answers when you need them. You can also choose the level of reasoning that fits your needs: Instant for fast responses, or Medium and High when you want ChatGPT to spend more time thinking.

Better listening

If you take a moment to think, ChatGPT Voice now waits instead of jumping in and interrupting. If you ask it to stay quiet and listen, it will. And when there’s background noise, like passing traffic or nearby conversations, ChatGPT is better at focusing on your voice instead of getting distracted.

Visual answers at a glance

Some answers are more useful when you can see them. While you’re talking, ChatGPT can now show rich visual cards for topics like weather, stocks, sports, and more. Voice also continues to support search, memory, images, and file uploads.

The result is a ChatGPT Voice experience that feels more natural, more capable, and more useful in everyday life.

Safety designed for voice

GPT‑Live was designed to be safe by default. It builds on the safety advances from our latest models while adding dedicated safety training across key risk areas and new safeguards designed specifically for voice.

Expanded safety testing

To better reflect how people use voice in real-life settings, we began by expanding our safety testing to include new audio-native evaluations. We also created synthetic evaluations that use generated audio to focus more intensively on key safety areas, drawing on what we learned from Advanced Voice Mode. Those areas include self-harm, psychosis and mania, emotional reliance on AI, violence, and sexual content. Internal experts also red-teamed the model for risks unique to voice.

In our testing, GPT‑Live performed comparably to or better than Advanced Voice Mode across nearly all of the areas we evaluated. You can read more about our testing and safeguards in the GPT‑Live system card(opens in a new window).