ChatGPT is coming to landlines and WhatsApp

ChatGPT is coming to phones. No, not smartphones—landlines. Call 1-800-242-8478 (1-800-CHATGPT), and OpenAI's AI-powered assistant will answer by Wednesday afternoon.

"Our mission at OpenAI is to make artificial general intelligence useful to all of humanity, and part of that is making it as accessible to as many people as possible," OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil said during a livestream. "Today, we are taking the next step by delivering ChatGPT on your phone".

The experience is similar to Advanced Voice Mode, OpenAI's real-time conversational capability for ChatGPT, but without multimodality. ChatGPT answers to phone enquiries and can handle duties such as sentence translation.

OpenAI is providing 15 minutes of free calling to users in the United States, after which the call just stops. The company states that typical carrier fees may apply.

Beginning Wednesday, ChatGPT will now be available on WhatsApp for individuals who want to text the AI helper. It's a straightforward back-and-forth discussion; because it's WhatsApp, you won't find the customisation choices available in the official ChatGPT app.

The WhatsApp experience, like ChatGPT over the phone, does not require an account; however, there is a daily limit. Users will receive a notification when they approach this limit, at which time they can continue chatting by installing the ChatGPT app or utilising ChatGPT on desktop.

OpenAI says it's working on other functions for the WhatsApp integration, such as image analysis and online search, but the company hasn't said when those would be available.

"This came out of a hack week project," Weil explained. "The team built this just a few weeks ago, and we loved it. They worked incredibly hard to get it shipped, and it's great to see it here. We're just getting started making ChatGPT more accessible to everyone."