ChatGPT launches group chats worldwide for all users on Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans, OpenAI announced on Thursday. The move comes a week after the company began piloting the feature in select regions including Japan and Modern Zealand.
This feature allows users to collaborate with each other and ChatGPT in one collaborative conversation. OpenAI says the launch will transform ChatGPT from a one-to-one assistant to a space where friends, family and colleagues can collaborate to plan, create and make decisions.
The company sees ChatGPT group chats as a way to coordinate travel, write documents together, settle debates, or work on research together, while ChatGPT helps you search, summarize and compare options.
A maximum of 20 people can participate in a group chat, provided they accept the invitation. Personal settings and storage remain private to each user, the company says.
To start a group chat, users need to tap the people icon and add participants directly or by sharing a link. Everyone will be asked to create a tiny profile containing their name, username and photo.
It’s worth noting that adding someone to an existing chat creates a novel conversation, leaving the original chat unchanged.
OpenAI claims that ChatGPT knows when to step in and when to stay noiseless during a group conversation. Users can tag “ChatGPT” to get a response. Additionally, ChatGPT can react to messages with emojis and refer to profile photos.
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This move marks OpenAI’s latest step towards transforming ChatGPT from a plain chatbot to a social platform. OpenAI says group chats are just the beginning of ChatGPT becoming a collaborative environment rather than just a single-player experience.
“Over time, we see ChatGPT taking a more active role in real group conversations, helping people plan, create and take action together,” the company wrote in an email to TechCrunch.
Thursday’s announcement comes less than two weeks after launch GPT-5.1which included both the immediate and thinking versions of the model. In September, OpenAI launched a social media app called Sora, where users can generate videos of themselves and their friends and then share them on a TikTok-style algorithmic feed.