Want to talk to ChatGPT? OpenAI gives you a phone number!
Starting today, users in the United States and Canada can directly call “1-800-ChatGPT (1-800-242-8478)” from their mobile or landline phones to have a conversation with ChatGPT. Users from other regions can add the same number to their contacts on WhatsApp.
“One of OpenAI’s missions is to ensure that everyone benefits from Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and part of that is making it accessible to as many people as possible,” said Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer at OpenAI, during a live broadcast on December 18th.
OpenAI has recently showcased the application of ChatGPT on various end devices. Apple has also integrated ChatGPT into its latest iOS 18.2 update, allowing Siri, the voice assistant, to suggest the use of ChatGPT in specific situations and provide responses directly.
Now, with the newly established “Hack We” project team, OpenAI is enabling users without internet access to “call” ChatGPT using traditional landline phone features.
But be careful not to reveal too many secrets when talking to ChatGPT!
“I am the AI assistant ChatGPT, and due to security reasons, our conversation may be reviewed…” greeted ChatGPT with lifelike voice as the call connected. OpenAI employees demonstrated asking 1-800-ChatGPT for roadside attractions and language translations during the live broadcast, and 1-800-ChatGPT responded smoothly, just like its online voice conversation counterpart.
As for the WhatsApp version of ChatGPT, global users can have text conversations with ChatGPT on WhatsApp without logging into a ChatGPT account. However, features that require account login, such as web search, file and image uploads, can only be accessed through the application or website.
Taiwanese users can also add ChatGPT to their contacts on WhatsApp.
According to Fortune magazine, many observers believe that 1-800-ChatGPT is designed to help OpenAI collect voice data with different accents and speech patterns. In the past, Google was criticized for collecting voice data from Google Assistant to develop and improve its speech recognition technology, which also involved the leakage of users’ personal and private audio content to external entities.
However, an OpenAI spokesperson told Fortune that the call records on 1-800-ChatGPT and WhatsApp messages will not be used to train the language models.
Currently, users in the United States and Canada have a monthly voice call limit of 15 minutes. OpenAI states that 1-800-ChatGPT is an experimental project, and its specific features and limitations may change.
Source: OpenAI YouTube, Fortune, The Guardian
This article is authorized for reprint from: Digital Times.