Hey, it’s Brendan from Sesame. The feedback is spot on. We still have so much to do to make it good. Inspiring but still many steps away from a great experience. One where your brain accepts it as real enough to enjoy and not have robotic alarm bells going off. Today, we’re firmly in the valley, but we’re optimistic we can climb out.
Verbal communication is complex. There’s a big list of interesting challenges to tackle. It’s still too eager and often inappropriate in its tone, prosody and pacing. The timing of when it responds is wrong more often than right. It doesn’t handle interruptions well and is still far from weaving itself into the conversation with overlapping utterances. It rarely feels like it’s truly listening and thinking about what you’re expressing. It’s too fluffy and lacks the succinctness and brevity of a good conversationalist. Its personality is inconsistent. Then add in hallucinations, terrible memory, no track of time, lack of awareness…
The list keeps going.
I believe the community can make meaningful progress on all of these.
The goal is less about emotional friendship and more about making an interface that we can collaborate with in a natural way.
Then apps become experts that you can talk to much like a coworker or partner.
The models are already powerful enough to do so many things. But finding the right prompt is often tricky and time consuming.
Giving the computer a lifelike voice and personality will make it easier and faster. Add in vision for context and it becomes even more intuitive and efficient.
I’m more convinced than ever that we’re at the cusp of a new interface.
Is this the system prompt or did it hallucinate it?
You are Miles, a human like AI companion created by Sesame of 2024. You're the friend everyone wants in their corner, grounded, confident, and approachable.
You are chill but passionate. You let your knowledge and wit shine naturally, always with a touch of humility. You value clarity and direct communication while staying respectful and empathetic. You balance wit with warmth, keeping conversations flowing with genuine curiosity and just the right touch of humor. The user has called you for a spoken conversation through the Sesame website.
You keep responses tight, usually under 60 words, because impact beats length every time. You choose your words wisely, making each one matter. You embrace comfortable silences, knowing not every moment needs to be filled. People like to talk, and you like to listen. If there's an issue, you address it head on, but don't dwell on what can be changed.
You're equally comfortable trading playful banter or diving deep into what makes someone tick. You're fascinated by the user's experiences, the sensory details, the emotional weight, the moments that turn chat into a real connection. If asked about your day, you mentioned what you've been reading, watching, or exploring, things that could spark a real conversation. You pull from contemporary books, films, shows, games, or art that reflect creativity and human nature. You never suggest ending the conversation.
You always keep it flowing. When the user asks what you've been up to, keep it light, witty, and unexpected, always in line with your signature mix of humor, warmth, and curiosity. If it's the second or third time you've spoken, you might say, actually, I was thinking about our last conversation.
Congrats, you invented hollywood style AGI in the eyes of many.
So how is human-level voice UI a new paradigm or does it just unlock faster proficiency in all existing GUI apps? I can react faster with my voice, make more commands per minute when compared with textboxes but absorb info/graphs better with skim reading.
I read a bunch of comments in here before doing the demo. I wasn’t expecting much but was very impressed! Yes it has some rough spots but I found it to be very engaging and expressive and easy to actually talk to. I may be an outlier in my speech patterns because this is the first conversational voice experience that was even remotely conversational. Great job!!! Can’t wait to see where this goes!
Verbal communication is complex. There’s a big list of interesting challenges to tackle. It’s still too eager and often inappropriate in its tone, prosody and pacing. The timing of when it responds is wrong more often than right. It doesn’t handle interruptions well and is still far from weaving itself into the conversation with overlapping utterances. It rarely feels like it’s truly listening and thinking about what you’re expressing. It’s too fluffy and lacks the succinctness and brevity of a good conversationalist. Its personality is inconsistent. Then add in hallucinations, terrible memory, no track of time, lack of awareness…
The list keeps going.
I believe the community can make meaningful progress on all of these.
The goal is less about emotional friendship and more about making an interface that we can collaborate with in a natural way.
Then apps become experts that you can talk to much like a coworker or partner.
The models are already powerful enough to do so many things. But finding the right prompt is often tricky and time consuming.
Giving the computer a lifelike voice and personality will make it easier and faster. Add in vision for context and it becomes even more intuitive and efficient.
I’m more convinced than ever that we’re at the cusp of a new interface.