Father of ChatGPT invests in a typing-free social app that Silicon Valley loves to chat on, "WeChat".

We post on Weibo and Moments, both with a blank input box, allowing you to record your current mood with words.

If this input box disappears, can we still share our lives happily?

Recently, the fledgling social product Airchat plans to go against the mainstream by not allowing you to type, but instead letting you send voice messages, with only a round microphone icon at the bottom.

With the slogan "Don’t type, just talk," Airchat has gained popularity in Silicon Valley over the past week.

For a while, friends across the ocean have also fallen in love with "chatting on WeChat."

Listening to posts at double speed has become a new way of chatting.

Visually, Airchat's design is actually not much different from other social media platforms like X.

Posts are arranged in a timeline, and you can follow other users, scroll through the feed, reply, like, and repost posts, and send private messages, etc.

The most special thing about Airchat is that users cannot type, posts and replies are all in voice, and then automatically transcribed into text by AI.

If you want to post, just hold down the microphone button at the bottom, speak, release, and send. The operation is similar to WeChat, and you don't even need to change your posture. Just bring the phone to your mouth according to muscle memory.

When browsing other people's posts, the default is to listen to the voice at double speed, but the speed can also be adjusted. In an era where even triple speed is not fast enough for binge-watching, the reason behind this setting is heartwarming.

However, using Airchat requires extra attention to public etiquette, as the voice is played automatically. If you don't want to be looked at askance by others, Airchat allows you to manually pause the voice and only read the text.

In addition, Airchat also supports "joining groups" for users to discuss topics such as e/acc, AI, coffee, and other diverse interests. If you want to make the most of the voice function according to local conditions, organizing an online poetry recitation contest is also very suitable.

The effect of playing voice on Airchat is also impressive. There is a colorful animation around the avatar, as if to draw everyone's attention, indicating that it's someone's turn to speak.

When you see this, you will find that the usage of Airchat is very simple. To give an intuitive example, WeChat is for one-on-one or group voice messaging, and we have to manually transcribe the voice messages into text.

But Airchat automates this process and arranges voice messages like a friend circle, allowing you to continuously scroll through.

At the same time, Airchat is also more international. The AI-transcribed text almost appears in real time with the voice, with high accuracy, and it understands multiple languages, including Hindi, Spanish, and even Hebrew.

If refusing to type makes people curious, Airchat also has a focus on social connections commonly used in the Silicon Valley tech circle: invitation-only.

It can be imagined that the early users of Airchat are mainly Silicon Valley practitioners, venture capitalists, technology enthusiasts, and journalists tracking hot topics.

Y Combinator CEO Gary Tan and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek also joined in, inadvertently adding to Airchat's appeal.

On April 21, Airchat finally decided to open to all US and EU numbers without invitation, but users from other countries still need an "invitation letter."

The threshold has been lowered by half, but FOMO (fear of missing out) still exists. X users who are enthusiastic about discussing new products have consciously become guides, and many have claimed to have the qualification to invite others, welcoming private messages for phone numbers.

Sam Altman, the well-known figure in Silicon Valley and CEO of OpenAI, also quietly supports Airchat.

Sam Altman supported, but not enthusiastically. According to Airchat, "He blindly wrote a check," which had no impact on the product itself.

The founder of Airchat believes that Sam Altman is not very concerned about money, but wants to participate in investments related to AI.

Voice is a more intimate medium for conversation than text.

The main selling point of Airchat lies in the voice as a medium.

Airchat has two founders, one is Naval Ravikant, co-founder of the venture capital firm AngelList, who is very famous in Silicon Valley, and the other is Brian Norgard, former Chief Product Officer of Tinder.

Since you have experienced various interactive dating apps, you must have your own insights into social interactions.

The two founders believe that voice is a more intimate means of conversation than text. Airchat aims to revive the increasingly rare phenomenon of having interesting conversations with new friends on the internet.

Even during interviews, Ravikant adheres to his values by openly answering questions on Airchat and rejecting journalists' private messages, as he sees it as an "old world" practice.

Early users of Airchat are often optimistic about technology, and their values subtly align with Ravikant's.

One user posted on X, saying that because of Airchat, his public speaking skills have improved, expressing his ideas more smoothly, becoming more confident, and even starting a podcast. The comments section agrees:

Aside from fun and connection, it's also good for practicing speaking.

Those with a strong drive for self-improvement can always find opportunities, but in the eyes of Airchat, the opponents are not just the various language learning apps that try to keep you on track, but mainly the traditional social media platforms.

Ravikant believes that text-based social media breeds keyboard warriors, but when we communicate with our own voices, it may not be so easy to get angry.

I want to hold a family gathering in my pocket... I hope to be able to take out my phone at any time and chat with interesting, pleasant, and witty people.

Ideals are full, reality is a slap in the face. Despite the founder's emphasis on peace & love and everyone chatting amicably, it didn't take long for Airchat users to start posting dangerous and radical remarks.

Of course, it cannot be denied that in the emotional race, voice is indeed an important way of interaction, conveying tones and emotions that cannot be directly expressed through text and emojis.

Before ChatGPT had a voice, we might not have felt the need for AI to have a voice. But now, many people are fascinated by its voice and are even training its personality, engaging in cyber romances with ChatGPT.

Hume, an AI startup that has launched a high emotional intelligence voice assistant, also put forward an interesting point: "The future of AI interfaces will be based on voice, because speech is four times faster than typing and carries twice the amount of information."

The information here is not just about the words themselves, but also about the hidden emotions. The tone, rhythm, and intonation of speech are actually the subtext of communication.

However, while AI can be trained to have high emotional intelligence, uncontrollable humans may not. It's presumptuous to think that peace can be achieved through voice socializing.

Voice functions are in use, but voice socializing is still very niche.

History doesn't have to repeat itself, but it does rhyme. If voice socializing relies solely on novelty, it won't survive for long.

Airchat easily brings to mind another popular voice socializing product in Silicon Valley: Clubhouse.

The heat of the tech industry comes and goes like the wind. This voice product, which was launched in April 2020 and became popular in Silicon Valley in early 2021, has become a relic of the times in just three or four years.

It's quite fitting to compare Airchat and Clubhouse.

Airchat is more like X and other social media, except that posts are shared in the form of voice, while Clubhouse is a real-time chat room. Although they have different natures, both revolve around voice socializing, and the beginnings of their stories are quite similar.

Clubhouse also used an invitation system in its early days, and it was also first embraced by the Silicon Valley community. However, it had slightly better luck than Airchat. At that time, most people were at home and easily felt lonely, so they were very interested in new online socializing models, which helped Clubhouse rise to prominence.

In February 2021, Clubhouse was valued at $1 billion, attracting Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to join the conversation, creating a "hard-to-find" situation.

However, the good times didn't last long. By the end of 2021, Clubhouse's download numbers had significantly slowed down. By 2023, half of its active users had been lost, and the company had laid off more than half of its employees.

The rapid decline is related to Clubhouse frequently experiencing service outages, false information, and extreme speech. It's also because the barriers for tech giants to replicate Clubhouse are not high.

At the end of 2020, Twitter tested Twitter Spaces, which supports real-time voice conversations. In June 2021, Facebook also launched a similar feature called Live Audio Rooms.

Clubhouse is full of highlights, and it may be directly replicated on Airchat. At the same time, as a new product, Airchat is not mature enough.

On April 15th, Airchat ranked in the top 20 on the social media list in the US App Store, but a week later it dropped to 80th place. The reason for this is that Airchat's positioning is somewhat awkward.

Although Airchat claims to be a purist in voice, its messages contain text and are arranged in a timeline, more like traditional social media with voice commentary, and it lacks the attractiveness and personalized recommendations of short videos.

After all, we read faster than we listen, and countless times we have seen a 1-minute WeChat voice message, expressionlessly manually transcribing it to text to barely dissipate our anger.

The setting of Airchat, which only allows voice posting, has brought about more confusion, as this is not the familiar way for us to expose ourselves online. Users who have experienced Airchat generally encounter several awkward situations:

- They don't like hearing their own voice.

- They are not used to speaking "off the cuff," as once the words are spoken, they cannot be edited, only deleted.

- They don't know how to speak appropriately and tactfully, unlike with X (text), Instagram (pictures), and TikTok (short videos), which they are already accustomed to using.

To some extent, this also creates a hidden filter, where the so-called brave people enjoy the world first, and the most outspoken individuals are often those who fear nothing.

If introverted individuals approach it with a "I'm here anyway" attitude and casually scroll through the information flow to see what others are saying, they may very well empathize with Zhu Ziqing: "The liveliness is theirs, I have nothing."

Engadget reporter Karissa Bell's experience was that while scrolling through the information flow, she found it somewhat noisy and confusing, feeling as if she had suddenly stumbled into someone else's chat scene, where the topics they were discussing were not very interesting and the voices were a bit grating.

From Clubhouse to Airchat, it seems that Silicon Valley has an obsession with voice socializing.

While X focuses on text, Instagram on images, and TikTok on short videos, the emphasis on authentic and natural voice socializing has repeatedly failed to gain traction, taking a back seat, serving niche users, or providing emotional value in podcasts, and at worst, serving as a feature of instant messaging apps.

Even on the so-called new social product Airchat, we can always see familiar shadows. From the early chat rooms, there are only a few core human needs: loneliness, the desire for companionship, and the hope for genuine communication.

Humans both hope to immerse themselves online with just a network cable connecting them, and hope that the virtual world can simulate reality enough. However, in an increasingly divided world, the more social products there are, the greater the spiritual pressure to stay connected, and the more we understand the irreplaceable nature of reality.

Ravikant said that Airchat's goal is not to gather influencers, but to help users find someone to talk to. However, the user with the most followers on Airchat at the moment is the founder himself, with just over 10,000 followers.

Most of the time, Airchat and similar platforms are just a brief gust of fresh air, serving as a fashion item for a few players, and then disappearing into an empty corner.