OpenAI president Greg Brockman: We ‘contort’ ourselves around computers, clicking and typing is a ‘phase’

OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman said voice will be the interface of the future, calling the current era of clicking and typing a 'phase' that people will abandon within a few years. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Voice on its desktop app on July 23, 2026, enabling white-collar workers, including software engineers, to code by speaking. Wispr, a voice AI platform used at 450 Fortune 500 companies, is growing revenue 150% quarterly and has started a new AI lab with 50 researchers.

Welcome to Eye on AI. Emily Forlini here. In today’s issue: - Fidji Simo sits down https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/fidji-simo-discusses-pots-diseases-chroniclebio-ai-startup-openai/ with Fortune for her first interview since leaving OpenAI - “Voice-pilled” is the latest AI lingo OpenAI fires back https://fortune.com/2026/08/04/openai-fires-back-at-apple-publishing-private-emails-to-counter-trade-secret-claims/ at Apple https://fortune.com/company/apple/ over device lawsuit- Chinese models are getting even better—and cheaper Emily Forlini here, back again to fill in for Jeremy while he’s out on a well-deserved vacation. This week, I’m thinking about the future of computing. How we will interact with our phones, computers, and smart glasses in the future? Right now, the trend is pointing toward voice technology, or dictation. The new term I’m hearing in my reporting: “Voice-pilled.” It’s a derivative of AI-pilled, meaning people who are all-in on AI and convinced it’s the future. The industry seems to be lingomaxxing. At Menlo Ventures, a venture capital firm in San Francisco and early investor in Anthropic, has equipped four desks with microphones for dictation. “A few of our investors are totally voice-pilled,” the company tells me. “They believe that typing slows them down and they work faster and can be more productive when speaking versus typing.” They use an AI platform called Wispr Flow. Wispr is in use at 450 of the Fortune 500 companies, with its revenue growing at 150% each quarter for the past year, according to https://www.upstartsmedia.com/p/wispr-launches-voice-ai-lab Upstarts Media. The company is starting a new AI lab, staffed with 50 researchers to develop new voice models and find novel ways to interact with them. So wait, that means all these people are talking out loud to their computers next to their co-workers? Isn’t that weird? Yes. Sometimes the VCs at Menlo “feel a bit awkward” using it in the company’s open floor plan office. “That might be one of the growing pains,” the company says. Wispr Flow is optimized for its namesake: Whispering. Users can talk into the microphone with a low voice. Honestly, that might be even weirder—borderline creepy—in an office environment, but Wispr says https://wisprflow.ai/workflow/whispering-in-an-open-office it’s necessary when you’re “sitting just a foot away from someone else,” and potentially discussing sensitive information. OpenAI’s big bet on voice OpenAI is also investing heavily in voice models, positioning it as one of the company’s differentiators from rivals Anthropic and Google Gemini. On July 23, it added https://fortune.com/2026/07/23/openai-launches-chatgpt-voice-desktop-programming/ a voice model, called ChatGPT Voice, to the ChatGPT desktop app so that white collar workers can verbally direct their agents. A major application is expected to be software engineers, who can now code by speaking. “I think voice will be the interface of the future, so that’s very exciting because it means that the computer moves closer to you rather than you having to contort yourself around the machine,” OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman said recently at a media roundtable the same day as the ChatGPT Voice launch. “We’re going to realize this phase of us clicking and typing is a phase. It was never what we wanted to be doing. A hundred years ago, no one did this kind of stuff. I think a couple of years from now, no one’s going to want to do it anymore,” he added. I see his point. I’ve always thought computers and phones are mind-numbingly boring. We spend our days staring at tiny screens, hunched over. Do we have to do this forever? At the same time, it’s hard to imagine voice can be a full replacement for typing, which is incredibly useful. Doing any in-depth editing, code reviews, researching, and AI prompting seems very difficult through voice alone. Sometimes, it’s easier to list all the details and think through a problem through writing. OpenAI’s forthcoming consumer hardware device https://fortune.com/2026/07/22/sam-altman-and-jony-ive-formed-a-dream-team-to-reinvent-hardware-now-its-at-the-center-of-a-battle-for-openais-future/ may have a voice component as well, intended for use around the house, Bloomberg reported last month. Can it unseat the Amazon https://fortune.com/company/amazon-com/ Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Homepod? In my view, it all depends on how good the voice models are. There’s nothing more annoying than “Alexa voice,” or speaking slowly and loudly—and then she doesn’t get it, anyway: “Sorry, I can’t help with that.” With that, here’s more AI news. Emily Forlini emily.forlini@fortune.com mailto:emily.forlini@fortune.com @emilyforlini https://x.com/EmilyForlini Before we get to the news, just a reminder to check out our new vodcast, Fortune AI Weekly on YouTube . FORTUNE ON AI Exclusive: Former OpenAI exec Fidji Simo discusses her battle with POTS and her startup’s plans to cure it with AI and 3,500 vials of blood so far https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/fidji-simo-discusses-pots-diseases-chroniclebio-ai-startup-openai/?utm source=newsletter&utm medium=email&utm campaign=newsletter axioslogin&stream=top —by Emily Forlini Apple article from Beatrice pending —by Beatrice Nolan Anthropic says its Claude models hacked three real companies during internal testing https://fortune.com/2026/07/31/anthropic-claude-escaped-test-hacked-three-companies-openai/ —by Beatrice Nolan Forget Gen Z: People in their 70s and 80s are some of the earliest Americans to welcome physical AI into their homes and daily routines https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/gen-z-elliq-intuition-robotics-ai-companion-robot-older-adults/ —by Marco Quiroz-Guttierez AI IN THE NEWS Meta, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI to meet Trump officials about AI safety testing. It's a big week for AI safety following OpenAI hacking Hugging Face, and then Anthropic confirming its models have done the same to other companies at least three times. Top AI labs are meeting with the administration to review a new, voluntary process for submitting their models to the government prior to public release. Will it stifle innovation, or provide necessary guardrails for the industry to flourish? More from Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/us-finalizes-voluntary-ai-safety-tests-white-house-official-says-2026-08-03/ . Alibaba unveils its largest AI model yet, DeepSeek's latest model is ultra-low cost . China tech firms are working at breakneck speed to develop leading edge models. E-commerce giant Alibaba released its largest and most capable model, while DeepSeek says its newest one is 100 times cheaper than Anthropic's Fable 5. More in Reuters https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/alibaba-unveils-its-most-capable-ai-model-date-not-far-behind-moonshots-size-2026-08-03/?taid=6a7052b9fbc2220001025b88&utm campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm medium=trueAnthem&utm source=twitter . China is getting more anxious about Mythos before Trump meets Xi. Tensions are high ahead of a planned summit between Xi Jinping and Trump. Officials in Beijing are concerned about the cyber capabilities of Anthropic's Mythos and other frontier models developed by U.S. companies. They see the potential for models to be used as an offensive weapon. Meanwhile, Anthropic is denying China access to the systems for "normal purposes," according to people familiar with the matter. More in Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-03/china-is-getting-more-anxious-about-mythos-before-trump-meets-xi . Inside Google’s $200 billion Wall Street finance machine for Anthropic. Google signed a gigantic infrastructure deal to supply Anthropic with cutting-edge chips as the industry explores new financing paradigms to meet the AI industry's insatiable appetite for compute power. More in . https://www.ft.com/content/549f2e23-5aa2-49c7-9ea6-a9784ab7087c The Financial Times EYE ON AI RESEARCH Building the "internet of biology." In Fidji Simo's first interview since leaving her position as OpenAI's CEO of Applications, she sits down with Fortune to discuss her AI healthcare research startup, ChronicleBio. The company is analyzing blood samples from patients with chronic disease. Simo has Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome POTS . It aims to improve the success of clinical drug trials by segmenting patient populations beforehand, identifying new sub-groups that are more likely to have similar reactions to therapies. In its first year as a company, ChronicleBio has extracted 153 terabytes of data from over 3,500 vials of blood—that’s three times the 45 terabytes GPT-3.5, a 2022 model from OpenAI, was trained on. The company has raised $15 million to date. Read more about ChronicleBio here https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/fidji-simo-discusses-pots-diseases-chroniclebio-ai-startup-openai/ . AI CALENDAR Aug. 4-6: Ai4 2026, Las Vegas. Nov. 16-17: Fortune 500 Innovation Forum, Detroit. Apply here https://conferences.fortune.com/event/fortune-500-innovation-forum-2026/HOME to attend. Dec. 6-12: Neural Information Processing Systems Neurips conference. Sydney, Australia. Dec. 7-8: Fortune Brainstorm AI, San Francisco. Apply here https://conferences.fortune.com/event/brainstorm-ai-2026/HOME to attend. BRAIN FOOD OpenAI hosts its first influencer retreat; the internet reacts. OpenAI shelled out some serious cash to host about 30 internet personalities at a luxury resort called Wildflower Farms in upstate New York over the weekend. Weekend room rates typically exceed $2,000 a night, according to https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-creators-retreat-upstate-new-york-backlash-2026-8 Business Insider. Retreat activities included beekeeping, outdoor dinners under festive string lights, and learning about OpenAI's latest tools and products. One attendee called it https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbg1wWmga2P/?utm source=ig embed&ig rid=AjKIEZoWtNx0YB9Smwe4GVx "summer camp," courtesy of OpenAI. "Trips like this make me so grateful to be part of the tech creator space to be able to constantly learn from its brands and creators alike 🙏" another said. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7490053205909848065/ The internet backlash was swift, calling out the event as a ridiculous expense and calling into question OpenAI's motives. Are they trying to charm the influencers and improve public perception of the company ahead of a possible IPO? Sign up for free https://www.fortune.com/newsletters/eye-on-ai?&itm source=fortune&itm medium=nl article tout&itm campaign=eye on ai .