OpenAI is transforming its flagship ChatGPT artificial intelligence assistant into a real-time social and collaborative platform with the global launch of group chat capabilities for up to 20 users.
The new feature is available immediately to all user tiers, including Free, Go, Plus, and Pro subscribers. It allows friends, families, and teams to plan, create, and make decisions collaboratively with the AI’s assistance.
This move marks a significant shift for ChatGPT, moving it beyond a single-conversation AI assistant into a shared, interactive space. The AI is designed to act as another group member, providing information, summarizing content, comparing options, and offering context.
Users can explicitly engage the AI by tagging “ChatGPT” within the chat, similar to mentioning a person in other social applications. The AI can also react to messages with emojis and reference user profile photos, enhancing the social interaction.
The global rollout follows a week of focused testing in selected markets, including Japan and New Zealand. This period allowed OpenAI to refine the user experience and the model’s behavior in group settings.
To initiate a group chat, users tap a dedicated “people” icon within the ChatGPT interface and can add participants directly or via a shareable link. Invited individuals are prompted to set up a brief profile with their name, username, and a photo.
OpenAI has incorporated privacy features, ensuring that each user’s personal settings and the AI’s memory of individual interactions remain private and are not shared across the group.
A key design choice ensures that adding new participants to an ongoing group chat creates a separate conversation thread. This preserves the original discussion’s context, preventing new members from altering or accessing prior sensitive topics.
The company envisions wide-ranging applications for the group chats, from coordinating travel plans and co-authoring documents to resolving debates and conducting team research. ChatGPT is positioned to support these activities through information retrieval, summary generation, and structured comparisons.
This strategic expansion aligns with OpenAI’s broader initiative to integrate AI into social, creative, and collaborative experiences. The launch closely follows the introduction of GPT-5.1, the latest language model iteration, and the Sora app in September, which allows users to generate and share videos in a social feed format.
The company’s vision aims for ChatGPT to play a more active role in “real group conversations,” assisting people not only in planning and creation but also in “acting together.” This positions ChatGPT closer to established social and productivity platforms, fostering increased user retention, particularly in educational and research environments.