OpenAI’s new GPT-4o model offers promise of improved smartphone assistants

System can operate directly in speech, speeding up responses and noticing voice quirks, but it still needs the power of Siri

In the year and a half since the launch of ChatGPT, one nagging question has only got more pressing: if AI can do this, why is my phone's assistant still so bad?

On Monday, the gulf grew larger still, as OpenAI announced a new model called GPT-4o - the o' stands for Omni - which gives the chatbot new abilities to understand and create audio, video, and still images.