OpenAI launches ChatGPT app for iOS that accepts voice prompts, Android coming soon

OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT chatbot, has launched a ChatGPT app for Apple’s iOS. In an announcement on Thursday, OpenAI s CTO Mira Murati said that an Android version is coming soon.

The new iPhone app, which is the first official mobile application for ChatGPT, is free to use and would sync your history across devices, the company said. The app also includes a $20 per month in-app purchase through Apple for ChatGPT Plus, OpenAI’s subscription that offers additional features.

Introducing the ChatGPT app for iOS! We’re live in the US and will expand to additional countries in the coming weeks. Android is next! https://t.co/p3PfTtxL9i

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 18, 2023

In a blog post, OpenAI said the new app will sync your conversations, accept voice input, and bring the company’s latest model improvements to users’ fingertips.

The iOS app can also answer questions such as “What are unique custom birthday gift ideas for my coffee-loving mom” or explain how to politely decline an invite to a concert.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT Plus subscribers will also get exclusive access to GPT-4’s capabilities, early access to features, and faster response times, all on iOS.

“The ChatGPT app also integrates Whisper, our open-source speech-recognition system, enabling voice input. ChatGPT Plus subscribers get exclusive access to GPT-4’s capabilities, early access to features, and faster response times, all on iOS.”

Since its release on November 3, 2022, ChatGPT has been hailed as one of the most significant breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). In just five days after its launch, ChatGPT crossed one million users. To put that in perspective, it took Netflix 3.5 years, Facebook 10 months, Spotify 5 months, and Instagram 2.5 months to reach the one million users mark. It took about nine months after its global launch for the popular short video app TikTok to add 100 million users.

Two months after its launch in November 2022 by OpenAI, ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. ChatGPT is based on the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), a type of large language model (LLM) developed by OpenAI with support for up to 175 billion parameters. It is a neural network-based model that is trained to generate human-like text by predicting the next word in a sequence based on the words that come before it. ChatGPT and other generative AI tools use the LLM technique to generate text in a chat-like or conversational style.

In March, OpenAI launched GPT-4 with better accuracy. Unlike its predecessors, OpenAI said the new GPT-4 is a large multimodal model that can solve difficult problems with greater accuracy, adding that GPT-4 is the company’s most advanced system to date, producing safer and more useful responses.

Thanks to its broader general knowledge and problem-solving abilities, the Microsoft-backed AI startup said the new GPT-4 exhibits “human-level performance” on many professional tests. In one test, OpenAI claimed that GPT-4 performed at the 90th percentile on a simulated bar exam, the 89th percentile on the SAT Math exam, and the 93rd percentile on an SAT reading exam.

For now, the app is currently being rolled out in the US. OpenAI said it plans to expand to other countries in the coming weeks.