Sonos Speakers Can Now Be Controlled With ChatGPT

Sonos has introduced Sonos 27, the newest version of its audio operating system, and you can now run your speakers with whatever AI assistant you want, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Sonos 27 voice is the company’s own assistant, built around music and mood curation. Sonos 27mcp is the more interesting one, since it lets you hook up any outside AI assistant or agent to your system, ChatGPT included. Atty Eleti, product lead for ChatGPT Voice at OpenAI, said the integration means people can ask ChatGPT to play music anywhere in their home from a phone or computer without leaving the conversation they’re already having.

“Twenty years ago, we made a bet that the rest of the industry is only now arriving at – a home deserves an audio operating system made just for it,” said Tom Conrad, CEO of Sonos, in a statement. “We built our system around a shared love of music and the belief that nothing sets the mood like great sound. Sonos 27 takes that further, bringing acoustic engineering, adaptable software, intelligence and design together in a way only Sonos can. This is just the start of what our audio operating system can do.”

Sonos also teased Sonos Custom Agents, which will eventually let people build their own agents with a chosen model, persona and voice.

Moving sound around the house

The other half of the announcement is a set of features Sonos is calling Fabric, which lets speakers sense each other and shift roles.

Headphone linking connects the Sonos Ace Ultra directly to your system, so you can push and pull audio between nearby speakers and your headphones, and it arrives as an Early Access feature. More practical for most people is portable surrounds. Sonos Positioning Technology uses high-frequency sound to figure out where a speaker is sitting, which means a Move 2 or Sonos Play can become a rear surround the moment you set it down in position.

Sonos 27 rolls out as a software update to all Sonos S2 products, though not every feature works on every product. The new app navigation starts September 8, along with Sonos 27mcp in Early Access.

Portable surrounds also land September 8 for Move 2 and Sonos Play owners. Headphone linking arrives the same day as an Early Access feature exclusive to Sonos Ace Ultra, which was also announced today with the Beam Ultra (more on these shortly).