I even have a confession: Even though I've worked as a tech journalist for many of my profession, consistently striving to adopt or at the least check out the newest and best personal technologies, I've never really found voice assistants to be useful to me when I exploit them repeatedly.
That's partly since the technology has been admittedly quite cumbersome thus far: Apple has been pushing the envelope by acquiring and releasing it Siri back in 2011, and shortly joined Smart speakers Amazon Echo and voice assistant Alexa Back in 2014. While I tested and used each, in each cases I quit after a number of weeks because I consistently needed to “struggle” with voice interaction – for instance, pausing before speaking a matter or closing my eyes often repeated.
I do know I'm not alone on this, as quite a few articles have been written during the last decade concerning the shortcomings of those two early voice assistants.
But then OpenAI got here together with ChatGPT and its human-like audio interaction in enhanced voice mode was launched – finally, after a protracted delay from the initial goal date, as early as September 2024.
Many AI power users have commented on how useful and helpful OpenAI's ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode is: able to searching the Internet for information and holding full conversations, analyzing and responding to uploaded images, even to pause during interruptions and permit the human user to quickly redirect or move the conversation to other topics – much like real human-to-human conversations.
And more recently, co-founder and president of OpenAI Greg Brockman reshared a post on X from AI power user and Wharton School of Business professor Ethan Mollick Note that on newer versions of the Apple iPhone, it is feasible to map the brand new “motion button” to ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode, allowing users to activate voice with one click.
I already had Advanced Voice Mode available as one among the pinnable and customizable widgets at the highest of my iPhone's lock screen, however it requires you to really take a look at the phone and find the icon.
Mapping Enhanced Voice Mode to the iPhone's physical motion button – the small one on the left side of the device – looks like a good more accessible option, requiring only touch to activate. I just activated it and hope that it should finally get me to make use of this admittedly amazing technology more often. This is how I did it:
You need a more moderen iPhone, from 15 Pro
- iPhone 15 Pro
- iPhone 15 Pro Max
- iPhone 16
- iPhone 16 Plus
- iPhone 16 Pro
- iPhone 16 Pro Max
The Action button is a brand new physical button situated on the left fringe of newer iPhone versions, just above the amount up and down buttons.
If you're establishing a brand new one among these iPhone models with iOS 18 or later, you must have the choice to decide on what you desire to use the motion button for when the phone starts up. By default, your iPhone's ringtone and notification sounds are set to silent.
However, if you’ve got already arrange your iPhone and haven’t received or used this selection, there is no such thing as a must worry! You can customize it later. Here's how.
Download the official ChatGPT iOS app from the App Store
It is obtainable Here. While free ChatGPT users can still access it, there’s a Variable monthly limit how often you may enter prolonged voice mode. ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Team, Enterprise, and Edu Pay subscribers (starting at $20 monthly) all have much higher or unlimited caps on the variety of Enhanced Voice Mode interactions they’ll access.
Once you’ve got installed the ChatGPT iOS app in your iPhone, proceed to the following step.
Go to Settings to reassign the iPhone motion button
From the Home screen, tap the Settings gear icon. Then scroll right down to the second options section. There you must find “Action Button” third under “General” and “Accessibility”. Tap on it.
This should open the motion button mapping application/option in your phone. This is a screen that permits you to toggle between different options to search out out what the motion button does when pressed.
Swipe left to navigate through options (and right to return to at least one) until you reach the choice labeled “Shortcut” (for me it was the ninth screen).
Tap the up/down arrow selection screen below the “Shortcut” text. Another selection screen should open, this time displaying quite a lot of shortcuts much like those within the official Apple iPhone Shortcuts app.
However, in case you scroll down under Getting Started and any custom shortcuts you previously created within the My Shortcuts sections, you'll see an inventory of icons for third-party apps that also offer shortcuts. This also needs to include the ChatGPT iOS app. Tap here.
Finally, you must see one other selection screen displaying various ChatGPT iOS app actions that could be mapped to your iPhone's motion button. You wish to tap to pick the one which shows slightly headphone icon that claims “Start a voice call.”
Tapping it should take you back to the foremost motion button selection screen. The link shall be clearly visible again and “Start a voice call” will now be listed as an motion.
After all that, you may finally swipe as much as close the Settings app and long-press the physical motion button. You should see the familiar Advanced Voice Mode screen, with a blue circle indicating the voice assistant. Start talking while you see this circle and the race is on!
If you’re fascinated about establishing your iPhone lock screen like I did to have a tappable icon on the screen to enable ChatGPT enhanced voice mode, you may try this easily too. Read on how…
Again, you'll must download the ChatGPT iOS app (duh). Then you may tap to get up your phone and long press on the time shown above. This will take you to the lock screen/wallpaper customization screen, which looks like this:
Tap “Customize” after which tap “Lock Screen” from the 2 options presented:
After you tap Lock Screen, iPhone should display an editable version of your Lock screen, indicated by boxes around widgets and interactive element areas. It looks like this:
Go ahead and tap the “Add Widgets” screen. You should then see one with the ChatGPT iOS app icon (a flower design) and a small headphone icon inside it, amongst many various options from different apps. Tap it and it should now appear in your top “Lock Screen” shelf, together with any others you choose (I chosen a weather widget).
That's it! Happy voice chatting and latest 12 months.
