ChatGPT has made waves in recent months for its innovative capabilities and controversies, and has revolutionized the way we think about the future of artificial intelligence. Now, it can be accessed right from the palm of your hand.
OpenAI, the renowned artificial intelligence research firm, has launched its ChatGPT app, bringing its conversational AI capabilities to Apple iOS users. The app became available on iPhone and iPad devices in the U.S. on Thursday and — unlike the desktop version — allows users to give voice commands.
"The ChatGPT app is free to use and syncs your history across devices," OpenAI said in a blog post. "It also integrates Whisper, our open-source speech-recognition system, enabling voice input."
The company also said subscribers of ChatGPT Plus will gain exclusive access to the company's latest language model technology, GPT-4, which surpasses its predecessor in both size and capability with its "human-level performance."
OpenAI unveils GPT-4, its most advanced AI language model
GPT-4 exhibits "human-level performance" on various professional and academic benchmarks, the company said.
"We're starting our rollout in the US and will expand to additional countries in the coming weeks. We’re eager to see how you use the app," OpenAI said. "As we gather user feedback, we’re committed to continuous feature and safety improvements for ChatGPT."
After launching more than five months ago to the public, ChatGPT has sparked excitement and confusion over its capabilities, even prompting hearings on Capitol Hill to discuss the technology's potentially harmful uses. However, the San Francisco startup claims to be fully committed to working with the government to prevent AI from getting out of hand.
"I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong. And we want to be vocal about that," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told lawmakers this week. "We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening. But we tried to be very clear eyed about what the downside case is and the work that we have to do to mitigate that."
Interestingly, one day after allowing ChatGPT on its app store, Apple reportedly restricted employees from using the program — and other artificial intelligence tools — over concerns workers could leak confidential data. Apple is currently working to develop its own related technology.
OpenAI's delay in getting ChatGPT onto phones has fueled a number of clones on the app store that are trying to profit off similar technology. The company hopes its official app will encourage users to migrate away from those.
While the ChatGPT app is currently only available on Apple devices, the company said it plans to unveil a version for Android users soon.
