IT之家 News on November 11: As early as 2024, OpenAI launched Advanced Voice Mode, allowing users to have more natural voice conversations with ChatGPT. The original Standard Voice Mode required interactions to be completed separately through speech-to-text, language model, and text-to-speech models, while Advanced Voice Mode can directly process and generate audio, resulting in faster response times and more natural conversations.
However, both the standard voice mode and the advanced voice mode use a turn-taking conversation mechanism, meaning the model must wait until the user has finished speaking before responding.
In July this year, OpenAI launched its new-generation voice model GPT-Live, which adopts a full-duplex architecture, allowing ChatGPT to deliver spoken responses while listening to the user, thereby enabling more natural and fluid conversations. In addition, GPT-Live can also handle complex questions and, without interrupting the current voice conversation, hand related tasks off to OpenAI's frontier text models.
OpenAI said that voice feature usage for ChatGPT has nearly doubled since GPT-Live launched in July this year. Currently, most users interacting with ChatGPT via voice have already switched to GPT-Live.
Based on this change, OpenAI announced today that it will officially discontinue Advanced Voice Mode and Standard Voice Mode in ChatGPT on December 11, 2026, gradually phasing out these two legacy voice experiences, and will focus future development resources on GPT-Live.
The specific adjustment schedule is as follows:
November 10, 2026: OpenAI began sending users notices that the legacy voice mode would be discontinued.
From now until December 11: users can still continue using Advanced Voice Mode and Standard Voice Mode.
December 11, 2026: Two legacy voice modes will be removed from ChatGPT's Settings-Voice option. Users who had previously opted to use these two modes will automatically be switched to GPT-Live.
Regarding past conversations: Previous voice conversation records will still be retained in the ChatGPT history, and users can continue these conversations via text or GPT-Live.
However, there are some exceptions to this adjustment. Since GPT-Live does not yet support real-time video and screen sharing features, these two features of ChatGPT will continue to use Advanced Voice Mode. In addition, when users have voice conversations with custom GPTs, Advanced Voice Mode will also continue to be used until December 11.
IT之家 noticed that OpenAI's decision to phase out the old voice mode has not won the approval of all users. On the X platform and in Reddit communities, many ChatGPT users have expressed dissatisfaction.
Some users believe that Standard Voice Mode provides more detailed answers and maintains better contextual continuity with text conversations. By comparison, GPT-Live frequently interrupts users while they are speaking, loses conversational context, or gives answers that are not practical enough. Some paid subscribers have even said that if OpenAI insists on carrying out this decision, they will consider canceling their subscriptions.
OpenAI acknowledged that some users may prefer the answer style of Advanced Voice Mode or Standard Voice Mode. The company said it is absorbing experience from the legacy models to further improve GPT-Live's answer depth, conversation coherence, and personalization performance.
What remains to be seen is whether OpenAI will reconsider this decision in the face of strong user opposition. Previously, OpenAI decided to postpone the deactivation of GPT-4o due to user opposition. At the time, the company faced similar public pressure and ultimately delayed its originally planned retirement schedule.