OpenAI developer account demonstrates GPT-Live-1: during calls, guests can interrupt, add details, or change direction while listening and speaking. It showcases how Yelp uses it to handle restaurant reservations. The model is open to API on the same day, serving as a developer version of ChatGPT's full-duplex voice, with the frontend voice layer priced at $0.05 per minute, allowing heavier reasoning and actions to be handled by paired models and tools.

Yelp connects GPT-Live-1 to two sets of merchant tools. Yelp Host is aimed at restaurant calls, while Hatch is for service providers like housekeeping. The official statement claims both are among the first products to deploy this model, using a full-duplex architecture to handle pauses, interruptions, and overlapping speech. Since its launch in October 2025, Yelp Host has processed over 1 million restaurant calls; Hatch manages tens of millions of leads across voice, SMS, email, and web, with client-side business value written as tens of billions annually. The technical director stated that the rounds and accuracy outperform the old voice architecture, with significant improvements in reservation and ordering connection rates, and callers' sentences are more complete.

The voice layer only changes the frontend. The backend still uses Yelp merchant data: business information, availability, ordering, daily specials, and seating arrangements. In July, Host integrated with OpenTable, allowing phone reservations, changes, and cancellations within the US and Canada network, with real-time updates without manual entry by staff. In August, Yelp reservations and waitlist entered ChatGPT conversations, allowing users to complete bookings without leaving the chat. Live-1 supplements the phone side, rather than creating another web button.

Reservations never go according to script: changes in party size, high chairs, noise, and interruptions from others. Full-duplex changes these from "the system doesn't understand" to a continuing conversation. The API is not bound to a single reasoning model; developers can connect lightweight backends for high concurrency scheduling and heavier models for complex customer complaints.

The market mechanism is the local living phone entry. The buy side consists of restaurants and service providers lacking front desk reception; the sell side is OpenAI selling the voice layer by the minute, while Yelp sells industry data based on connections and reservations. Funds flow from merchant subscriptions and per-call billing into the $0.05 per minute bill, then back to the platform from reservation commissions. The beneficiaries are Yelp, which holds both inventory and voice models; the pressured side is the keypad voice menu and systems that only do web reservations. The event-driven aspect is the API launch and customer demonstrations, not a new reservation network acquisition.

The phone is still there, but the script has been removed. A model that can be interrupted without dropping the call first takes the most expensive minutes from the front desk.

Source: Public Information