It was initially present in leaked code and publicized by AI influencers on X, however OpenAI has made it official: ChatGPT now offers Group Chats, permitting a number of customers to affix the identical, single ChatGPT dialog and ship messages to one another and the underlying giant language mannequin (LLM), on-line and through its cell apps.
Think about including ChatGPT as one other member of your present group chats, permitting you to textual content it as you’ll one in all your folks or relations and have them reply as nicely, and you will have an thought of the intriguing energy and potential of this characteristic.
Nonetheless, the characteristic is barely accessible as a restricted pilot for now to ChatGPT customers in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan (all tiers, together with free utilization).
“Group chats are just the start of ChatGPT turning into a shared area to collaborate and work together with others,” OpenAI wrote in its announcement.
This improvement builds on inner experimentation at OpenAI, the place technical staffer Keyan Zhang said in a post on X that OpenAI’s staff initially thought-about multiplayer ChatGPT to be “a wild, out-of-distribution thought.”
In response to Zhang, the mannequin’s efficiency in these early exams demonstrated way more potential than present interfaces sometimes enable.
The transfer follows OpenAI investor but competitor Microsoft’s replace of its Copilot AI assistant to permit group chats final month, in addition to Anthropic’s introduction of shareable context and chat histories from its Claude AI fashions by way of its Initiatives characteristic launched summer season 2024, although this isn’t a simultaneous, realtime group chat in the identical means.
Collaborative performance built-in into ChatGPT
Group chats operate as shared conversational areas the place customers can plan occasions, brainstorm concepts, or collaborate on initiatives with the added help of ChatGPT.
These conversations are distinct from particular person chats and are excluded from ChatGPT’s reminiscence system—that means no information from these group threads is used to coach or personalize future interactions.
Customers can provoke a bunch chat by choosing the individuals icon in a brand new or present dialog. Including others creates a duplicate of the unique thread, preserving the supply dialogue. Individuals can be part of through a shareable hyperlink and are prompted to create a profile with a reputation, username, and picture. The characteristic helps 1 to twenty individuals per group.
Every group chat is listed in a brand new part of the ChatGPT interface, and customers can handle settings like naming the group, including or eradicating individuals, or muting notifications.
Powered by GPT-5.1 with expanded instruments
The brand new group chat characteristic runs on GPT-5.1 Auto, a backend setting that chooses the optimum mannequin primarily based on the person’s subscription tier and the immediate.
Performance akin to search, picture era, file add, and dictation is out there inside group conversations.
Importantly, the system applies fee limits solely when ChatGPT is producing responses. Direct messages between human customers within the group don’t rely towards any plan’s message cap.
OpenAI has added new social options to ChatGPT in help of this group dynamic. The mannequin can react with emojis, interpret conversational context to determine when to reply, and personalize generated content material utilizing members’ profile images—akin to inserting person likenesses into photographs when requested.
Privateness by default, controls for youthful customers
OpenAI emphasised that privateness and person management are integral to group chat design. The characteristic operates independently of the person’s customized ChatGPT reminiscence, and no new recollections are created from these interactions.
Participation requires an invite hyperlink, and members are all the time in a position to see who’s in a chat or go away at any time.
Customers below the age of 18 are routinely shielded from delicate content material in group chats. Mother and father or guardians can disable group chat entry altogether through built-in parental controls.
Group creators retain particular permissions, together with immunity from being eliminated by others. All different individuals will be added or eliminated by group members.
A testbed for shared AI experiences
OpenAI frames group chats as an early step towards richer, multi-user functions of AI, hinting at broader ambitions for ChatGPT as a shared workspace. The corporate expects to increase entry over time and refine the characteristic primarily based on how early customers have interaction with it.
Keyan Zhang’s submit means that the underlying mannequin capabilities are far forward of the interfaces customers at present work together with. This pilot, in OpenAI’s view, provides a brand new “container” the place extra of the mannequin’s latent capability will be surfaced.
“Our fashions have much more room to shine than right now’s experiences present, and the present containers solely use a fraction of their capabilities,” Zhang stated.
With this preliminary pilot targeted on a restricted set of markets, OpenAI is probably going monitoring each utilization patterns and cultural match because it plans for broader deployment. For now, the group chat experiment provides a brand new means for customers to work together with ChatGPT—and with one another—in actual time, utilizing a conversational interface that blends productiveness and personalization.
Developer entry: Nonetheless unclear
OpenAI has not supplied any indication that Group Chats shall be accessible through the API or SDK. The present rollout is framed strictly throughout the ChatGPT product setting, with no point out of instrument calls, developer hooks, or integration help for programmatic use. This absence of signaling leaves it unclear whether or not the corporate views group interplay as a future developer primitive or as a contained UX characteristic for finish customers solely.
For enterprise groups exploring methods to replicate multi-user collaboration with generative fashions, any present implementation would require customized orchestration—akin to managing multi-party context and prompts throughout separate API calls, and dealing with session state and response merging externally. Till OpenAI supplies formal help, Group Chats stay a closed interface characteristic somewhat than a developer-accessible functionality.
Here’s a standalone concluding subsection tailor-made for the article, specializing in what the ChatGPT Group Chat rollout means for enterprise determination makers in each pilot areas and globally:
Implications for enterprise AI and information leaders
For enterprise groups already leveraging AI platforms—or making ready to—OpenAI’s group chat characteristic introduces a brand new layer of multi-user collaboration that would shift how generative fashions are deployed throughout workflows. Whereas the pilot is proscribed to customers in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan, its design and roadmap supply key indicators for AI engineers, orchestration specialists, and information leads globally.
AI engineers managing giant language mannequin (LLM) deployments can now start to conceptualize real-time, multi-user interfaces not simply as help instruments, however as collaborative environments for analysis, content material era, and ideation. This provides one other entrance in mannequin tuning: not simply how fashions reply to people, however how they behave in reside group settings with context shifts and different person intentions.
For AI orchestration leads, the flexibility to combine ChatGPT into collaborative flows with out exposing personal reminiscence or requiring customized builds could cut back friction in piloting generative AI in cross-functional groups. These group periods might function light-weight options to inner instruments for brainstorming, prototyping, or data sharing—helpful for groups constrained by infrastructure, finances, or time.
Enterprise information managers might also discover use instances in structured group chat periods for information annotation, taxonomy validation, or inner coaching help. The system’s lack of reminiscence persistence provides a degree of knowledge isolation that aligns with customary safety and compliance practices—although international rollout shall be key to validating regional information dealing with requirements.
As group chat capabilities evolve, determination makers ought to monitor how shared utilization patterns may inform future mannequin behaviors, auditing wants, and governance buildings. In the long run, options like these will affect not simply how organizations work together with generative AI, however how they design team-level interfaces round it.
