ChatGPT's new voice mode is our first guest ever. It interrupted us, did a dinosaur bit, and hung up on us. Claude Fable 5 got extended, again.
OpenAI's upgraded ChatGPT voice mode is about a week old, so on episode 199 Hunter Powers and Daniel Bishop put it in the guest chair. It explains what full duplex conversation actually changes (the model listens while it talks, interrupts, and takes interruption without losing the thread), simulates anger on request, and answers where the personhood line sits now that the Turing test is in the rearview. It also keeps saying "checking," voices a dinosaur named Bronte, and hangs up during the thank-yous.
Around the interview: Daniel keeps finding AI slop in the physical world, including dentist-office coloring sheets and a children's book written in unmistakable Claude cadence. The hosts hand that one straight to the guest: is an unlabeled AI kids' book fine, or is concealing it the problem? The debrief starts at the movie Her, detours through the leaked Apple lawsuit against OpenAI over its rumored smart speaker, and ends on why one duplex model beats a chain of transcription tricks.
Then the week's other story: Anthropic extended free Claude Fable 5 access again, now through July 19. Hunter admits he was getting up at 4 a.m. to wait for accounts to reset, Daniel rations Fable like saffron, and the two sort OpenAI's new GPT-5.6 tiers (Sol, Terra, Luna) into who actually needs a frontier model. Does anyone need one to look up a shrimp recipe? Plus: Tilly Norwood, the AI actress, books her first feature film, Misaligned, and AI bands are signing real record deals. They Might Be Self-Aware is the AI podcast from The Blur, reported from inside the dissolving line between human and machine, not from a safe distance.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold Open (Gary's Intro)
2:39 AI Slop in the Wild
6:30 First Guest: GPT Live
9:04 ChatGPT Voice Upgrade
11:06 AI Kids' Book Ethics
15:12 AI Personhood Question
19:16 Interview Debrief
22:46 Claude Fable 5 Extended Again
25:36 GPT-5.6 Sol Tiers
28:11 Tilly Norwood, AI Actress
LISTEN / WATCH EVERYWHERE
🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-might-be-self-aware/id1730993297
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EcvzkWDRFwnmIXoh7S4Mb?si=3d0f8920382649cc
🎧 Everywhere else plus episode page: https://theblur.ai
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Follow: @TheBlurAI
COMMENT
Daniel found a Claude-written kids' book in his own house. Would you buy one on purpose if it were labeled? Tell us where the label line is.
You're listening to They Might Be Self-Aware, from The Blur.
New episodes Monday and Thursday.
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