Connect with us

Technology

OpenAI expands Realtime API with new voices and cuts prices for developers

Published

2 hours ago

on

OpenAI expands Realtime API with new voices and cuts prices for developers

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More

OpenAI updated its Realtime API today, which is currently in beta. This update adds new voices for speech-to-speech applications to its platform and cuts costs associated with caching prompts. 

Beta users of the Realtime API will now have five new voices they can use to build their applications. OpenAI showcased three of the new voices, Ash, Verse and the British-sounding Ballad, in a post on X. 

The company said in its API documentation that the native speech-to-speech feature “skip[s] an intermediate text format means low latency and nuanced output,” while the voices are easier to steer and more expressive than its previous voices. 

However, OpenAI warns it cannot offer client-side authentication for the API now as it’s still in beta. It also said that there may be issues with processing real-time audio. 

“Network conditions heavily affect real-time audio, and delivering audio reliably from a client to a server at scale is challenging when network conditions are unpredictable,” the company shared.

Advertisement

OpenAI’s history with AI-powered speech and voices has been controversial. In March, it released Voice Engine, a voice cloning platform to rival ElevenLabs, but it limited access to only a few researchers. In May, after the company demoed its GPT-4o and Voice Mode, it paused using one of the voices, Sky, after the actress Scarlett Johansson spoke out about its similarity to her voice. 

The company rolled out ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode for paying subscribers (those using ChatGPT Plus, Enterprise, Teams and Edu) in the U.S. in September. 

Speech-to-speech AI would ideally let enterprises build more real-time responses using a voice. Suppose a customer calls a company’s customer service platform. In that case, the speech-to-speech capability can take the person’s voice, understand what they are asking, and respond using an AI-generated voice with lower latency. Speech-to-speech also lets users generate voice-overs, with a user speaking their lines, but the voice output is not theirs. One platform that offers this is Replica and, of course, ElevenLabs.  

OpenAI released the Realtime API this month during its Dev Day. The API aims to speed up the building of voice assistants.

Advertisement

Lowering costs

Using speech-to-speech features, though, could get expensive. 

When Realtime API launched, the pricing structure was at $0.06 per minute of audio input and $0.24 per audio output, which is not cheap. However, the company plans to lower real-time API prices with prompt caching. 

Cached text inputs will drop by 50%, and cached audio inputs will be discounted by 80%.

OpenAI also announced Prompt Caching during Dev Day and would keep frequently requested contexts and prompts in the model’s memory. This will drop the number of tokens it needs to create to generate responses. Lowering input prices, could encourage more interested developers to connect to the API. 

Advertisement

OpenAI is not the only company to roll out Prompt Caching. Anthropic launched prompt caching for Claude 3.5 Sonnet in August. 


Source link
Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Technology

Google’s AI-powered weather app is rolling out to older Pixels

Published

14 mins ago

on

October 31, 2024

By

Google’s AI-powered weather app is rolling out to older Pixels

Google’s Pixel 9 launched with a cool new standalone weather app that can summarize outdoor conditions using AI. As reported by 9to5Google, the company is rolling it out to older Pixels running Android 15 with all the latest updates installed, including one of ours here at The Verge.

The standalone Google Weather app will pull saved locations from the built-in weather service already present on Pixels to let you track weather in multiple locations, arrange weather data blocks, track weather on a map, and get a summary so you don’t need to figure out if an umbrella is needed for the day.

Some Google Weather features are reminiscent of the discontinued Dark Sky app.
Image: Google

As of writing, the app currently has a 2.3-star rating, with a few listed complaints like one noting you can’t check the weather in random cities without adding it to your saved locations list first. Google Weather is a welcome new option for those who haven’t found a favorite weather app since Dark Sky was acquired and shut down by Apple in 2020.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Science & Environment

Chinese EV maker BYD’s quarterly sales overtook Tesla’s for the first time

Published

26 mins ago

on

October 31, 2024

By

Chinese EV maker BYD's quarterly sales overtook Tesla's for the first time


New cars, among them new China-built electric vehicles of the company BYD, are seen parked in the port of Zeebrugge, Belgium, October 24, 2024.

Yves Herman | Reuters

Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD reported third-quarter revenue that topped that of behemoth rival Tesla for the first time.

On Wednesday, BYD reported revenue for the three months ended Sept. 30 of 201.12 billion yuan ($28.24 billion), up 24% from a year ago. That exceeded Tesla’s revenue of $25.18 billion reported for the same period.

Advertisement

It’s a first for the Beijing-based EV giant as its solid performance came despite the EV downtrend in mainland China. The company sold a record number of passenger vehicles in August.

At least half of BYD’s sales are hybrid vehicles, whereas Tesla’s vehicles are battery only.

But in terms of net profit, Tesla still took the lead.

The American carmaker saw net profit of $2.18 billion from July to September, up 16.2% from a year ago. Its Chinese counterpart, BYD, saw an increase in profit of 11.5% in the same period to 11.6 billion yuan.

Advertisement

Likewise, Tesla remains on top in year-to-date sales, slightly edging out BYD’s roughly $70.53 billion total revenue at $71.98 billion.

BYD is one of the most prominent EV makers in China, the world’s largest automotive market where it must contend with both domestic and global rivals for dominance.

On BYD’s home turf, Elon Musk’s Tesla is one of its toughest competitors. The Model Y remained the best-selling battery-powered electric car in China in September, according to Chinese automotive website Autohome. BYD’s Seagull trailed closely behind in second place.

The competition will likely only get more cut-throat as European Union tariffs came into effect this week, despite China’s disapproval.

Advertisement

On Wednesday, the EU announced it would implement tariff increases on Chinese EVs, taking duties to as high as 45.3%.

The extra tariffs range from 7.8% for Tesla to 35.3% for SAIC Motors, which will stack on top of a 10% standard import duty on all electric vehicles.

Trump's proposed tariffs is a gift to China: Analyst

While tariffs imposed on BYD and Tesla were reduced from an earlier proposal, both automakers have taken steps to ramp up production in Europe which would help them work around the duties.

Reuters reported earlier this month that Tesla got the green light to double the capacity of its Berlin plant.

And BYD announced last year it would set up shop in Hungary. In July, the Chinese automaker said it would invest $1 billion into a plant in Turkey, which has a customs union with the EU.

Advertisement

— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.



Source link

Continue Reading

Technology

Quordle today – hints and answers for Thursday, October 31 (game #1011)

Published

35 mins ago

on

October 31, 2024

By

Quordle on a smartphone held in a hand

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,000 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today – or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my Wordle today, NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles.

Source link

Continue Reading

Technology

Ancient Mayan city discovered via page 16 of Google search results

Published

56 mins ago

on

October 31, 2024

By

Ancient Mayan city discovered via page 16 of Google search results

Proceeding to even the second page of Google search results is rare enough, but going all the way to page 16 and then selecting an entry that leads to the discovery of a huge Mayan city that was lost for centuries under a jungle canopy … well, that’s really something.

“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring,” Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane University in Louisiana, said in comments reported by the BBC.

The survey had been carried out using Lidar, a remote sensing technology that uses laser pulses to measure distances and create precise, 3D maps of surfaces. In this case, it was deployed from a an airplane to map objects on the ground.

Auld-Thomas decided to process the data using a system used by archaeologists, and to his great astonishment he discovered remnants of a large ancient city that may have been populated by up to 50,000 people around 800 AD.

After handing his findings to archaeologists, a further investigation uncovered pyramids, sports fields, causeways connecting districts, and amphitheaters, the BBC reported.

Advertisement

The city, which has now been named Valeriana after a nearby lagoon, is in the southeastern state of Campeche, some 600 miles (around 965 kilometers) east of Mexico City.

Analysis of the aerial imagery revealed that Valeriana covers an area of about 6.4 square miles (16.6 square kilometers) and features two major centers, with densely packed housing and causeways linking them together. Nearly 6,800 buildings have been counted in all. Two plazas with temple pyramids for worshipping are also part of the ancient city’s landscape. The imagery even reveals a court where the city’s residents would have played ball games.

It’s not clear why the city failed to survive, though it’s suggested that drought conditions brought on by climate change may have forced the inhabitants to move on to more fertile areas.

As the BBC’s report points out, Lidar technology has utterly transformed how archaeologists survey locations covered in vegetation, with earlier surveys done on foot and taking considerably longer to complete.

Advertisement

These are certainly exciting times for archeologists, though Auld-Thomas commented that “one of the downsides of discovering lots of new Maya cities in the era of Lidar is that there are more of them than we can ever hope to study.”

Though in this case, Google search — and Auld-Thomas’s decision to go beyond page one of the results — also played a major role in the discovery of Valeriana.






Source link

Continue Reading

Technology

Google Wallet to be available for kids by 2025 with ‘Family Link’

Published

1 hour ago

on

October 31, 2024

By

Google Wallet to be available for kids by 2025 with ‘Family Link’

Google Wallet for kids will be available by 2025. The upcoming version of the app will support tap-to-pay on kids’ phones, but parents will have full control via “Family Link”.

Google Wallet will work for kids by 2025

Google Wallet is one of the most convenient on-device payment platforms. It not only supports monetary transactions but also stores credit cards, IDs, passes, tickets, and a lot more.

Google has reportedly confirmed that Google Wallet for kids will be ready by 2025. Kids will be able to download and use the virtual wallet on their Android phones.

Google Wallet for kids will allow tap-to-pay transactions in stores. Children or teens won’t have access to any credit or debit cards saved in the Google Wallet ecosystem.

Advertisement

Google has confirmed that Google Wallet for kids will need a device PIN, password, fingerprint, or facial recognition. The app will ask for these user authentication techniques to set up and authenticate NFC payments.

How will kids use the Wallet app?

Google is limiting Google Wallet for kids. Moreover, parents or guardians will have full control over the app via the “Family Link” platform.

Parents will have to approve every credit or debit card added to their kids’ phones. Any existing payment card can be added to a kid’s Wallet. Using their Family Link app, parents can view recent transaction history. Guardians can remotely remove a card, as well as block passes.

Speaking of non-banking cards, Google Wallet for kids will also support gift cards and event tickets. However, the app won’t support IDs and health cards at the time of its launch.

Advertisement

Google Wallet for kids largely relies on the backend infrastructure Google developed for the Fitbit Ace LTE devices, mentioned the search giants. “Following the positive response of tap-to-pay on Fitbit Ace LTE devices, we’re expanding tap-to-pay for kids to Google Wallet. The new experience is built with safety in mind, and will allow parents to supervise their kids’ usage – including approving new cards, easily removing cards, and viewing transaction history.”

Google has further assured that this “new experience is built with safety in mind.” The company indicated that Google Wallet users in the US and several other regions will have access to the new version of the app starting next year.

Source link

Continue Reading

Technology

Proton brings its VPN to Apple TV with new app

Published

2 hours ago

on

October 31, 2024

By

Menu

Proton announced the debut of an Apple TV app for its virtual private network. The new app, which was “among the most requested features from our community,” according to the company’s , is available for download from the App Store on any Apple TV. It will allow customers with a paid Proton VPN plan to stream their media content from any location on Apple’s set-top box.

Proton VPN was our favorite when we it in 2023, and it’s still our this year for a virtual private network. The service boasts excellent features for security, privacy and usability. Our only real complaint was that the free tier comes with a lot of limitations. But if you’re interested in the company’s platform, Proton is currently running an early where you can snag one or two year plans at a steep discount.

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2024 WordupNews.com