A French AI lab⁶⁷ just dropped a chatbot that can actually talk. Like, with a real voice. And anyone can play with it right now.

What's going on here?

Kyutai, a non-profit AI lab, unveiled Moshi - a voice-enabled AI that's openly accessible to all.

What does this mean?

• Moshi can chat smoothly and expressively using its voice, not just text

• It's compact enough to run locally on devices, no internet needed

• The code and model weights will be freely shared (unprecedented for voice AI)

• Developers can tweak it, extend it, or use it as a base for voice-enabled products

• It's got killer text-to-speech with emotion and multi-voice interactions

Why should I care?

Kyutai built this in just 6 months with 8 people. Talk about punching above their weight! The downside? Moshi's knowledge and factual accuracy are deliberately limited right now. All this while OpenAI hasn’t shipped the voice mode for GPT-4o, it’s been 7 weeks since it was announced.