We’re excited to announce the availability of OpenAI’s latest GPT-4o audio models—GPT-4o-Transcribe, GPT-4o-Mini-Transcribe, and GPT-4o-Mini-TTS in Microsoft Foundry Models. This practical guide provides developers with essential insights and steps to effectively leverage these advanced audio capabilities in their applications.

What’s New in OpenAI’s Audio Models?

Azure OpenAI introduces three powerful new audio models:

• GPT-4o-Transcribe and GPT-4o-Mini-Transcribe: Speech-to-text models outperforming previous benchmarks.
• GPT-4o-Mini-TTS: A customizable text-to-speech model enabling detailed instructions on speech characteristics.

Model Comparison

Technical Innovations

Targeted Audio Pretraining

OpenAI’s GPT-4o audio models leverage extensive pretraining on specialized audio datasets, significantly enhancing understanding of speech nuances.

Advanced Distillation Techniques

Employing sophisticated distillation methods, knowledge from larger models is transferred to efficient, smaller models, preserving high performance.

Reinforcement Learning

Integrated RL techniques dramatically improve transcription accuracy and reduce misrecognition, achieving state-of-the-art performance in complex speech recognition tasks.

Getting Started Guide for Developers

Step 1: Set Up Azure OpenAI Environment

• Obtain your Azure OpenAI endpoint and API key.
• Authenticate with Azure CLI:

az login

Step 2: Configure Project Environment

• Create an .env file with your Azure credentials:

AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT="your-endpoint-url"
AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY="your-api-key"
AZURE_OPENAI_API_VERSION="2025-04-14"

Step 3: Install Dependencies

• Set up your virtual environment and install essential libraries:

uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # macOS/Linux
.venv\Scripts\activate     # Windows
uv add azure-ai-openai python-dotenv gradio aiohttp

Step 4: Deploy and Test Using Gradio

• Deploy and experiment with audio streaming using Gradio:

python your_gradio_app.py

Developer Impact

Integrating Azure OpenAI GPT-4o audio models allows developers to:

• Easily incorporate advanced transcription and TTS functionality.
• Create highly interactive, intuitive voice-driven applications.
• Enhance user experience with customizable and expressive audio interactions.

Further Exploration

• Explore GPT-4o Audio Models on Nick.FM
• Detailed Azure OpenAI Service Documentation
• Quickstart with Azure AI Foundry

We encourage developers to leverage these innovative audio models and share their insights and feedback!