Welcome to the mobile age of the chatbot. Bing AI is already here and now OpenAI has released its first mobile version of the hugely popular ChatGPT for iOS.
Just days after CEO Sam Altman testified before Congress the dangers of unregulated AIOpenAI announced (opens in new tab) and delivered and brought to you another extension of its platform for Generative AI and Large Language Model services best iPhone.
As a free and official version of the ChatGPT Chatbot, this one is based on GPT-3. However, you can access ChatGPT+ and others GPT-4-supported services (which means newer training and possibly better accuracy) by logging into your account or upgrading through the app.
This is a limited rollout as it is only available in the US and there is no Android version. OpenAI promises in its blog post: “Android users, you are next! ChatGPT will be coming to your devices soon.”
ChatGPT on iOS works similar to the web-based desktop version. Upon installation, you will be reminded that “ChatGPT is inaccurate”. However, this is a significantly stripped down user interface and certainly sleeker than what you’ll find in Microsoft’s mobile version Bing AI.
A new chat screen will open with a white screen and a black (sometimes blue) dot in the middle. Below that is the command prompt window where you can type your query. I asked about a business plan for a new ice cream parlor we are planning to build on the beach in San Diego. The response was almost instantaneous and very detailed.
say it
However, new in this mobile version is the ability to add voice queries. There is a small voice recorder icon on the right side of the command prompt window. Once you select this, the area below the text prompt will say that the recording is in progress. You have to tap to stop. However, on multiple attempts, the Whisper-based open-source speech recognition system failed to capture my request and instead presented an API error.
However, it turns out that ChatGPT was listening and when we selected “Try Transcription Again” it interpreted our request and threw it into the command prompt window. Finally, on the fifth try, the query was captured and the recognized text was pasted into the prompt box. I still had to click the “up arrow” to enter the prompt and submit to ChatGPT.
We suspect that OpenAI will have fixed the above bug by the time you read this.
Because your ChatGPT history syncs across devices, you can open the history in the app and see the prompts I added to the mobile app today, as I did, as well as all the others I created four months ago.
You can even go back and continue any of those conversations. I looked into the question of whether ChatGPT would stay free forever in February and realized that now it’s not always free. It was basically, “Hey man, I have no control over this, talk to the head of OpenAI.” Okay, not in those words, but that was the heart of the matter.
There aren’t many other controls besides starting a new chat, logging out, and deleting your account – in case you’re really afraid of AI.
Although ChatGPT is now available on your iPhone, this is not the case siri. For example, a timer cannot be set on your phone. On the other hand, neither Siri nor ChatGPT can directly control the brightness of my iPhone.
I guess both still have a way to go before they are the ultimate mobile voice AI.
The ChatGPT app is now available for download in the App Store. Search “OpenAI ChatGPT” if you want the real ChatGPT and not one of the myriad of free imitations.
