Anthropic has updated Claude's voice mode to support its more powerful Opus and Sonnet models, expanding a feature that was previously limited to the company's fastest-but-simplest model, Haiku.
Voice mode lets users hold full spoken conversations with the chatbot rather than having to type prompts and read responses. Users can switch between Claude's models mid-conversation, and can also move between text and voice in the same chat without losing context. With the addition of Opus and Sonnet support, users will be able to hold longer and more complex conversations, including providing feedback on the communication style.
In addition, Claude's Voice mode can now also tap into connected tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Slack, so Claude can check a calendar or summarize an email thread out loud, for example. Users with free accounts can connect one tool, whereas paid plans support more.
According to Anthropic's support documentation, the models available in voice mode now follow the user's subscription plan, and voice conversations start on whichever model the user last selected in text chat.
Claude's voice mode language support was extended beyond English earlier this year, with French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish available in beta. Users have to manually select a language in the app.
Voice mode works on iOS, Android, desktop, and the web, but Anthropic says it is designed to work best on phones. Voice conversations count toward standard usage limits and Anthropic's newest Fable model is not yet supported.
Meanwhile, OpenAI yesterday launched ChatGPT Voice in its desktop app, powered by a model it calls GPT-Live, which the company says can direct multiple agents running in ChatGPT Work or Codex by voice alone. The feature is rolling out on macOS and Windows to paid plans.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect ChatGPT Voice's recent rollout.
