"Verbal needs" aren't a thing- interpersonal contact, friendship, those are real things that can't be replaced by talking to a smart fridge.

The comment you're replying to is talking about the need to actually speak a language to learn it fully (as opposed to just reading/writing), which could definitely be fulfilled by talking to a smart fridge.

They're not saying that the fridge is able to replace human relationships generally.

What do you think is lacking in OpenAI voice?

I wish they didn't take out the "off the screen" outputs from the previous voice mode. I miss being able to ask it to output an image or codeblock when I wanted to come back to something later.

Just the latency and naturalness of the conversation. Then again, I haven’t tried it for a month, so perhaps it is time to try again.

The random shrieks and noises that come up are something else. Those are wild when you encounter them.