OpenAI now lets you call ChatGPT on your phone
OpenAI is taking a big step towards making ChatGPT the "everything app" by allowing users to call it on their phones and message it on WhatsApp.
As of today, you can call ChatGPT or message it in WhatsApp. By adding 1-800-ChatGPT, to your contacts list, you can call it and chat with it on a phone call. In the live demo, OpenAI shared how users can call ChatGPT on a road trip and ask it questions about sites and landmarks like the "Flintstone House."
This was demoed on an iPhone, but OpenAI also shared how users can make calls with an old flip phone and a rotary phone, and lo-and-behold, ChatGPT picks up the phone and answers your questions. Calling with ChatGPT comes with 15 minutes of free calling for users with a phone plan in the U.S.
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An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed that data from voice calls and WhatsApps messages will not be used for model training.
ChatGPT phone calls wasn't on our 12 Days of OpenAI bingo card, but in hindsight it makes sense as part of OpenAI's overall strategy to embed its technology into our daily lives. "The mission of OpenAI is to make artificial general intelligence beneficial to all of humanity. And part of that is making it as accessible as possible to as many people as we can," said CPO Kevin Weil in the livestream.
Over the past few weeks OpenAI has launched ChatGPT features like Canvas for iterating on writing and code, Projects as smart folders for organizing your conversations, and full availability of its search engine ChatGPT Search. While other recent announcements focus on advanced features for OpenAI power users, these tools are geared towards attracting casual or less tech-savvy users, in order to engage a broader demographic range.
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Still to come, OpenAI is expected to launch agentic tools that can browse the web, write code on your behalf and even message you first. This was possibly hinted at by engineer Tibor Blaho and TestingCatalog who both reportedly discovered a feature called "Tasks" that enables users to automate future tasks like sending them news updates, in the manner of Google alerts.
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ChatGPT works in WhatsApp in a typical chatbot fashion, where you can message it for information — a pesto recipe for instance. Currently, this is text based, but interacting with ChatGPT on WhatsApp will soon come with support for images.
Cecily is a tech reporter at Mashable who covers AI, Apple, and emerging tech trends. Before getting her master's degree at Columbia Journalism School, she spent several years working with startups and social impact businesses for Unreasonable Group and B Lab. Before that, she co-founded a startup consulting business for emerging entrepreneurial hubs in South America, Europe, and Asia. You can find her on X at @cecily_mauran.
