Don't know what you're talking about, clips of the AI voice were publicly available at the time.

They were definitely not. Here is someone in that first thread trying to figure out what is actually going on, and failing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40421757

I had to wade through 12 gigantic generic political subthreads to find this.

"Do you have an example of the changed voice anywhere?" (No replies.)

"Yes, I feel gaslit by the whole situation" is a great summary.

Please post a clip from the time. I'm still curious to hear how similar or not they acually were.