Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snapchat will soon start “experimenting” with placing sponsored messages next to chat threads from friends, according to CEO Evan Spiegel. These “Sponsored Snaps” from brands will appear as unread messages in Snapchat’s main Chat tab, implying that they’ll sit above messages from a person’s contacts until they’re acted on. This is the first time Snap will show ads in the most used part of its app. In an employee memo also posted on the company’s website, Spiegel says that Sponsored Snaps will appear “without a push notification, and opening the message is optional.” It’s unclear how easy it will be to get rid of a Sponsored Snap without opening it, or if doing so will even be possible. (Snap declined to comment beyond Spiegel’s memo.) “... Continue reading…

OpenAI is always working on interesting new features and additions for its chatbot, and thanks to reverse engineering, we occasionally get a sneak peek at them before they launch. Over the weekend, a few engineers playing around with ChatGPT uncovered eight new voices within the AI chatbot that have yet to be made available to the general public. In a series of posts on X, the ChatGPT users found a new "read aloud" icon in an experimental version of the web app. They eventually dug up eight new ChatGPT voices, each with their own distinct codenames, and you can hear all of them in the post below: https://twitter.com/btibor91/status/1830354260996784193 At the time of writing, there are four voices to choose from on ChatGPT: Breeze, Cove, Ember, and Juniper. There was a fifth voice, Sky, but it was removed due to how similar it sounded to a certain actress who starred in the movie Her. As noted by TestingCatalog, the voices sound much more natural and expressive than the ones that the chatbot currently offers. They also do a better job of expressing non-verbal phrases and animal noises, as you can hear in the video above, and seem to understand how to emphasize words or phrases that are italicized or bolded by the user. We have no idea when or if any of these voices will ever see the light of day. As TestingCatalog points out, there isn't even room for eight more voices in the dropdown menu as it stands. Perhaps a major update is in the works that will include these voices. Don't Miss: GameNGen is an insane new AI model that can generate playable video games on the fly The post OpenAI is testing 8 new voices for ChatGPT that could launch soon appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Amazon gift card deals, offers & coupons 2024: Get $550+ free Today’s deals: $17 myQ, $399 Apple AirPods Max, $40 Fire TV Stick 4K Max, $180 off Sonos Arc, more Today’s deals: $50 off Sonos Ace, $90 Ninja Air Fryer Pro, Igloo coolers, Lenovo laptop, $18 pillows, more Today’s deals: Pixel 9 preorder offers, $20 waterproof speaker, $225 HP laptop, $89 Sony earbuds, more

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