OK computer: how voice AI will change the world

Talking to computers can be frustrating—ask anyone who’s been on the phone recently to automated customer services. A decade ago, the arrival of voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri was supposed to mark a new era in how humans interacted with machines, but their limitations quickly became apparent. In recent months, though, computerised voices seem to have moved light-years ahead. You can now have a conversation with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. You can clone your own voice. You can even generate and interact with a personalised podcast, where AI presenters will discuss any documents you like. The voice AI revolution has finally arrived. How will it change the way we interact with the digital world? Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Alex Hern, our AI correspondent; Vasco Pedro of Unbabel; Mati Staniszewski of ElevenLabs; Steven Johnson of Google Labs. For more on this topic, listen to our sister podcast “The Weekend Intelligence”, which asked: can AI help us communicate with the dead? Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.