OpenAI Inc. is bringing its ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence tool to smartphones for the first time, releasing an iPhone version on Thursday and promising a service for Android devices in the future.
The software, which is free, is now owned by Apple Inc. Available in the US for iOS devices through the US App Store. With it, users can write questions and receive answers from the chatbot. It also includes speech recognition, so users can voice their queries, according to a Thursday blog post from the Palo Alto, California-based startup. However, the bot will only respond in writing. The app also syncs text-based conversations across multiple devices.
The company said that users who pay for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus subscription can also access its most powerful large language model, GPT-4, through the app. OpenAI plans to introduce its app to more countries in the coming weeks and hopes to release an Android version soon.
Since its debut on the Web late last year, millions of people have experimented with ChatGPT and other bots, such as Bard, created by Alphabet Inc’s Google. This new wave of chatbots is built on top of LLM, AI. The models are trained on large amounts of data from the internet so that they can predict and generate responses similar to users. ChatGPT and its ilk are already being exploited for everything from writing birthday greetings to coding, but they are also prone to exhibit bias and fabricate believable narratives.
In an ironic twist, just as the new app is rolling out, Apple is restricting internal use of ChatGPT and other AI tools. The Wall Street Journal, citing a document, reported that the company is concerned that the software could be used to reveal sensitive data. Apple joins Samsung Electronics Co. and other corporate giants in banning employees’ use of the devices.
For consumers, the release of the iOS app could make ChatGPT accessible to many more people than the web version of the chatbot. This could bring OpenAI more directly to consumers through reviews, which users can post on the App Store for others to see.
“We can’t wait to see how you use the app,” the company said in its blog post. “We are committed to continually improving ChatGPT’s features and security as we collect user feedback.”
Users will need the premium version for faster response times as well as previews of new features.
