Can ChatGPT do voice to text? How to talk to ChatGPT and Claude, and dictate into any chat box

Can ChatGPT do voice to text?

OpenAI's voice dictation FAQ and OpenAI's ChatGPT Voice page.

What happens to the audio?

OpenAI says audio from dictation is kept for as long as the chat is in your history, and is deleted within 30 days of you deleting the chat, with exceptions for security or legal reasons. If you are a consumer user and chose to share audio to improve its models, it may train on dictation audio; you can turn that off in data controls. Business users are not trained on by default. That is OpenAI's own description; read the page for the current wording.

Can Claude do voice to text?

Claude's apps have voice mode for spoken conversations, with hands-free and push-to-talk options (see Anthropic's voice mode help page). Claude Code, the coding tool, has its own voice dictation: run /voice, then hold Space to speak your prompt, or tap to start and tap again to send. Anthropic says it streams your audio to its servers, needs a claude.ai account, and does not work in cloud or SSH sessions. See the Claude Code voice dictation docs.

Does Claude Code's dictation support Chinese?

Anthropic's list of dictation languages does not include Chinese or Cantonese (it lists, for example, English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French and German). If you set an unsupported language, it falls back to English. A separate tool is needed for Chinese prompts.

What do the built-in features not do?

• They work inside that one app. ChatGPT's microphone does not type into your email or your editor.
• They type what they hear. A dictation app with clean-up removes ums and false starts from a long spoken prompt.
• They need you to be in that app; a dictation app works wherever the cursor is.

How does a dictation app help?

A chat box is a text box. Click in it, hold Alt+Space with Zefmi, speak, let go, and the text is typed at the cursor, in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot or a code editor. Zefmi only types: it does not press Enter, run commands or send the prompt for you. Read the prompt, then send it. See dictating prompts for coding tools and which apps.

Which should I use?

• You want a spoken conversation: ChatGPT Voice or Claude voice mode.
• You want to dictate one message into one chat: the chat's own microphone button.
• You dictate prompts all day, in several apps, with ums removed: a dictation app, such as Zefmi on Windows.

OpenAI, Anthropic and Claude Code pages read on 31 Oct 2026. These features change often; check the linked pages.