Seamless hands-free voice-to-voice accessibility for ChatGPT on Android

August 14, 2023 5:02 PM

I'd like to get ChatGPT working hands-free on my Android, so I can talk to it via voice, and hear audio replies. There are third-party apps and mobile browser plugins that claim to do something similar, but I'm not having much luck (more details inside)

I'm a bit new to accessibility software, screen reader software etc. I'm helping my sight-impaired aunt set up ChatGPT so she can just talk to it, and it talks back.

OpenAI released an Android app which works great for typing or speaking your chat, and reading the result. However, a few problems:
-- You have to press the microphone button to start recording a question you want to ask if
-- After it responds, there's no built-in way for it to read the reply aloud
-- The chat is cumulative and it doesn't all fit on the screen, so any software that just reads what's visible on the screen may not work for this situation (?). Also, after asking a new question and receiving a response, I would like it to only read the new part, not reread the whole chat area.

Can anyone suggest some accessibility software for Android that might help read the contents of my chat in the official native Android app? Or any other ideas would be welcome. The new ChatGPT mobile app is still fairly limited in the options it has. Maybe they'll add voice-to-voice in the future.

Many people are still using the web browser on their phone instead, to access ChatGPT, because it's more full-featured and supports third-party ChatGPT plugins. And using the browser is a possible option for my aunt also (for example via Hermit so it launches more easily). But in that case what accessibility software might help make the browser-based usage into a more seamless voice-to-voice experience? The goal is that she won't have to click on buttons too much (or at all) during her conversations with the AI.

There are many third-party apps which make calls into the OpenAI API, but I can't be sure which ones to trust, and none of them so far seem to do exactly what I'm describing.

Thanks for any thoughts on this...

posted by TreeHugger to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

So you want to replace your voice assistant with ChatGPT?
posted by kschang at 5:24 PM on August 14, 2023

Response by poster: Not necessarily to replace the voice assistant, although that might be fine as an approach if nothing else works. I assume people in the blind community have dealt with these issues, for example. There must be some configurable software that facilitates two-way hands-free voice communication with Android apps?
posted by TreeHugger at 5:32 PM on August 14, 2023

This is extremely advanced as it involves using Tasker, which is a programming/scripting environment for Android, but it seems to work:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tasker/comments/14l96lv/howto_replace_google_assistant_with_chatgpt/
posted by kschang at 5:38 PM on August 14, 2023

Best answer: This question is no longer relevant, as the latest Android app of ChatGPT now offers this hands-free conversational capability.
posted by TreeHugger at 6:20 AM on January 19 [1 favorite]