Since one of the big improvements here is supposedly the writing style, on that topic I'm mystified about something:

Why is it that the voice models in Claude and ChatGPT have a perfectly normal style with barely any "AI smell", while the writing models are so obviously recognizable as AI?

The answer is likely that models underlying the voice modes are (post) trained differently. If so, then why can't the writing model be similarly trained? Presumably they haven't found a way to train them to be both "smart" (i.e. solve tasks etc) and pleasant to talk to?