ChatGPT has changed quite a bit since its late 2022 debut. What started as a web app chatbot has exploded into an AI you can have a real conversation with. The bot can even see now. But even though you have your choice between that original web app or the app on your phone or computer, ChatGPT is now ready to chat via a more old-school method: by phone call.
OpenAI announced the ChatGPT phone line on Thursday, Dec. 19. (To be clear, it’s not April 1.) The number—which is literally 1-800-CHATGPT (1-800-242-8478), is entirely free to call, although OpenAI warns carrier fees may apply. If you prefer to text, you can message the number on WhatsApp. (Regular SMS is not supported.) You don’t need a ChatGPT account in order to talk to the bot: Just call or message the number, and you’ll get a response .
While this experience is free, there are some limits. OpenAI says you can only talk to ChatGPT on the phone for 15 minutes a month, with a daily limit on messages to WhatsApp. The company doesn’t says what that limit actually is, but that it may change based on demand. In addition, some ChatGPT staples, such as ChatGPT search, image recognition, custom instructions, and memory, are not available with this experience. The knowledge cutoff when using ChatGPT with this number is Oct. 2023, so don’t expect ChatGPT to know anything that happened after that.
You should know that OpenAI will retain your phone calls and messages with 1-800-CHATGPT, and will associate those chats with the phone number you use to call or message the bot.
What’s it like calling ChatGPT?
To be honest, it’s pretty similar to chatting through advanced voice mode, just with the low-quality audio you’ve come to expect from a traditional phone call.
That is, until I had a relatively creepy interaction with the bot. After chatting for a couple minutes, I thought I’d see if ChatGPT would hang up if I asked it to. At first, it said something along the lines of being here to help, but didn’t actually hang up the call. So I asked again. No answer. I asked a second time. No answer. I said, “Hello?” No answer. Cue panic.
So, I hung up myself and called back. After an initial greeting, I asked my question again. ChatGPT immediately said “Sure, thanks for chatting!” And hung up. Go figure. The next time I called back, I thought to test its knowledge limits with, “Who’s the president?” I didn’t get an answer. ChatGPT instead say “Goodbye! Take care!” Then proceeded to leave the call in dead air again.
While unnerving, I think the problem is that ChatGPT has trouble understanding certain questions when asked over the phone this way. Some questions it answers with no problems, while others it seems to get wrong. I asked “Who’s the president?” on another call, and the bot thought I was asking about user privacy. But when I say “Who’s the President of the United States?” it got it.
Calling ChatGPT definitely puts up some roadblocks that aren’t there with the dedicated app, but, otherwise, it’s the usual ChatGPT experience. If you love that, great. If you don’t, you probably won’t use this. The perk here, I suppose, is you can call ChatGPT without an account. But, barring some rare cases, I don’t see that being a big plus for most people.