ChatGPT Voice: what it can do, and why it doesn’t replace a business phone line

According to OpenAI’s help centre, ChatGPT Voice lets you talk with ChatGPT and hear a spoken reply within a chat: you can follow the answer in writing, type when you can’t speak and reread the exchange. It is available on the web, iOS and Android, as well as in the desktop app.

Three options coexist. Live, based on GPT-Live-1 or GPT-Live-1 mini depending on the plan, listens and speaks at the same time and can use web search and memory. Advanced is the previous real-time experience, still required for video and screen sharing on mobile. Standard works turn by turn, transcribing speech before replying.

You start a conversation by tapping the Voice icon in the message bar, after allowing microphone access. Use of Live is capped depending on the plan, over a rolling 24-hour period: limited access on the free version, a few hours on paid plans, more on higher tiers.

OpenAI states that Live is mainly designed for one-to-one conversations, that you can only have one voice conversation at a time, and that transcripts are not word-for-word records.

ChatGPT Voice is an assistant for the person holding the app: they are the one speaking. Nothing in how it works allows a customer to dial your business number and reach it: the ChatGPT Voice help page describes no way of connecting the app to a business phone line or forwarding calls to it.

Even if you give it information, it doesn’t become your company’s front desk: nothing is provided to announce the AI and the recording to callers, transfer a call to your colleagues, book an appointment on a customer’s behalf or send a contact record to your team after the call.

According to OpenAI, audio clips from Live and Advanced conversations are stored with the transcript in the history and kept for 30 days, and whether transcripts are used for training depends on the account settings and plan. These rules are designed for the account holder, not for third parties calling your business.

Yet recording your customers’ calls comes with its own obligations: informing the caller at the start of the conversation, defining a purpose, limiting retention. A phone answering tool must be designed for these obligations from the outset.

A business voice agent must be connected to your line, through call forwarding from your operator or a dedicated number. It answers from your own information (website, documents, prices), says it is an AI and that the call is recorded, can transfer to a person, collects contact details and passes on what was said.

For developers, OpenAI offers a technical building block: its Realtime API can receive phone calls via SIP, provided you go through a SIP trunk provider, configure a webhook and build the call-handling logic on the server side. It’s a component to assemble, not a ready-to-use answering service.

Alyas is the ready-to-use version: you forward your calls to its line, it answers 24/7, says it is an AI and that the call is recorded, answers from the information you provide (website, text, PDF), transfers to your number, captures contacts, books appointments via Google Calendar or Cal.com and produces a transcript and summary, with hosting in the European Union. 10-day free trial.