This plan also offers unlimited access to o1-mini, GPT-4o and the Advanced Voice feature. OpenAI said ChatGPT’s free version will roll out this search function within the next few months. This new feature allows ChatGPT to compete with other search engines — such as Google, Bing and Perplexity.
- The Guardian questioned whether any content found on the Internet after ChatGPT’s release “can be truly trusted” and called for government regulation.
- In October 2023, OpenAI’s image generation model DALL-E 3 was integrated into ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Enterprise.
- The Plus membership gives unlimited access to avoid capacity blackouts.
- These limitations may be revealed when ChatGPT responds to prompts including descriptors of people.
ChatGPT (based on GPT-4) was better able to translate Japanese to English when compared to Bing, Bard, and DeepL Translator in 2023. In 2023, OpenAI worked with a team of 40 Icelandic volunteers to fine-tune ChatGPT’s Icelandic conversation skills as a part of Iceland’s attempts to preserve the Icelandic language. In October 2023, OpenAI’s image generation model DALL-E 3 was integrated into ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Enterprise. According to the company, the paid version of the website was still experimental, but provided access during peak periods, no downtime, priority access to new features, and faster response speeds. ChatGPT was initially free to the public, and OpenAI planned to monetize the service later.
- In September 2025, following the suicide of a 16-year-old, OpenAI said it planned to add restrictions for users under 18, including the blocking of graphic sexual content and the prevention of flirtatious talk.
- ChatGPT (based on GPT-4) was better able to translate Japanese to English when compared to Bing, Bard, and DeepL Translator in 2023.
- For more information, visit the developer’s accessibility website .
- But when people need to figure something out, many now start with a chat conversation, not a search box.
- In the reinforcement learning stage, human trainers first ranked responses generated by the model in previous conversations.
The Pro launch coincided with the release of the o1 model, providing unlimited access to o1 and advanced voice mode. The model can also generate new images based on existing ones provided in the prompt, which can, for example, be used to transform images with specific styles or inpaint areas. In December 2024, OpenAI launched a new feature allowing users to call ChatGPT with a telephone for up to 15 minutes per month for free. It allows ChatGPT to search the web in an attempt to make more accurate and up-to-date responses. ChatGPT is frequently used for translation and summarization tasks, and can simulate interactive environments such as a Linux terminal, a multi-user chat room, or simple text-based games such as tic-tac-toe. These include, among many others, writing and debugging computer programs, composing music, scripts, fairy tales, and essays, answering questions (sometimes at a level exceeding that of an average human test-taker), and generating business concepts.
Data Linked to You
Users interact with ChatGPT through conversations which consist of text, audio, and image inputs and outputs. It is designed to generate human-like text and can carry out a wide variety of tasks. Users can upvote or downvote responses they receive from ChatGPT and fill in a text field with additional feedback. The laborers were exposed to toxic and traumatic content; one worker described the assignment as “torture”.
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The data needs to be reviewed to avoid perpetuating bias, but including diverse and representative material can help control bias for accurate results. If the data the model pulls from has any bias, it is reflected in the model’s output. OpenAI plans to add a watermark to longer text pieces to help identify AI-generated content. To help prevent cheating and plagiarizing, OpenAI announced an AI text classifier to distinguish between human- and AI-generated text. Learn more about the pros and cons of AI-generated content.
What are the alternatives to ChatGPT?
Over many iterations of ChatGPT, plus users maintained more access to better models than the free tier provided, and access to additional features like voice mode. In the reinforcement learning stage, human trainers first ranked responses generated by the model in previous conversations. This doesn’t mean people have stopped “Googling,” but it means ChatGPT has peeled off the kinds of questions for which users want a direct explanation instead of a list of links. This plan gives users access to its advanced OpenAI o1 model to solve more complex problems and reasoning for AI capabilities.
Regional responses
ChatGPT gained one million users in five days and 100 million in two months, becoming the fastest-growing internet application in history. In The Atlantic magazine’s “Breakthroughs of the Year” for 2022, Derek Thompson included ChatGPT as part of “the generative-AI eruption” that “may change our mind about how we work, how we think, and what human creativity is”. Kevin Roose of The New York Times called it “the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public”. GPT-5 was launched on August 7, 2025, and is publicly accessible through ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and via OpenAI’s API.
ChatGPT Gov
The most notable limitation of the free version is access to ChatGPT when the program is at capacity. ChatGPT Plus also gives priority access to new features for a subscription rate of $20 per month. Go to chat.openai.com and then select “Sign Up” and enter an email address, or use a Google or Microsoft account to log in. The ban was lifted a month later after OpenAI made changes to comply with EU data protection regulations. ChatGPT uses text based on input, so it could potentially reveal sensitive information. ChatGPT also does not understand language that might be offensive or discriminatory.
In January 2023, the International Conference on Machine Learning banned any undocumented use of ChatGPT or other large language models to generate any text in submitted papers. Some, including Nature and JAMA Network, “require that authors disclose the use of text-generating tools and ban listing a large language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT as a co-author”. As of 2023, there were several pending U.S. lawsuits challenging the use of copyrighted data to train AI models, with defendants arguing that this falls under fair use. This includes text-to-image models such as Stable Diffusion and large language models such as ChatGPT. Italian regulators assert that ChatGPT was exposing minors to age-inappropriate content, and that OpenAI’s use of ChatGPT conversations as training data could violate Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. A shadow market has emerged for users to get access to foreign software tools.
Later reports showed the bug was much more severe than initially believed, with OpenAI reporting that it had leaked users’ “first and last name, email address, payment address, the last four digits (only) of a credit card number, and credit card expiration date”. Shortly after the bug was fixed, users could not see their conversation history. One such workaround, popularized on Reddit in early 2023, involved making ChatGPT assume the persona of “DAN” (an acronym for “Do Anything Now”), instructing the chatbot that DAN answers queries that would otherwise be rejected by the content policy.
In August 2024, the FTC voted unanimously to ban marketers from using fake user reviews created by generative AI chatbots (including ChatGPT) and influencers paying for bots to increase follower counts. The FTC asked OpenAI for comprehensive information about its technology and privacy safeguards, as well as any steps taken to prevent the recurrence of situations in which its chatbot generated false and derogatory content about people. ChatGPT has never been publicly available in China because OpenAI prevented Chinese users from accessing their site. In September 2025, following the suicide of a 16-year-old, OpenAI said it planned to add restrictions for users under 18, including the blocking of graphic sexual content and the prevention of flirtatious talk. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that users were unable to see the contents of the conversations. … It’s also a way to understand the “hallucinations”, or nonsensical answers to factual questions, to which large language models such as ChatGPT are all too prone.
An AP-NORC poll reports that about 60% of U.S. adults who use AI say they use it to search for information, making this the most common AI use case. A 2025 Pew Research Center study found that 34% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT, roughly double the share found in 2023. As a scholar who studies information retrieval, I see that this shift of the tool people reach for first for finding information is at the heart of how ChatGPT has changed everyday technology use. I’m a professor and director of research impact and AI strategy at Mississippi State University Libraries. Operator is an AI agent that interprets orders and goes to a web browser to perform these tasks for the user. This allows more people to experiment with ChatGPT because no account is needed.
But when people need to figure something out, many now start with a chat conversation, not a search box. As of 2024, it had approximately 2.74 billion users, with that number increasing steadily since 2010. One 2025 summary of voice-search statistics estimates that about 34% of people ages 12 and up own a smart speaker, down from 35% in 2023. Google’s strength lies in letting users cross-check multiple sources, while ChatGPT’s accuracy depends heavily on the quality of the prompt and the user’s ability to recognize when a response should be verified elsewhere.
Juergen Schmidhuber said that in 95% of cases, AI research is about making “human lives longer and healthier and easier.” He added that while AI can be used by bad actors, it “can also be used against the bad actors”. Over 20,000 signatories including Yoshua Bengio, Elon Musk, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, signed a March 2023 open letter calling for an immediate pause of giant AI experiments like ChatGPT, citing “profound risks to vegas casino apk society and humanity”. In July 2023, the FTC launched an investigation into OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, over allegations that the company scraped public data and published false and defamatory information. OpenAI said it has taken steps to effectively clarify and address the issues raised; an age verification tool was implemented to ensure users are at least 13 years old.
For example, a user could create a GPT that only scripts social media posts, checks for bugs in code, or formulates product descriptions. Images will be available on all platforms — including apps and ChatGPT’s website. People can also use ChatGPT to ask questions about photos — such as landmarks — and engage in conversation to learn facts and history. Microsoft does this through the use of its Copilot chatbot. Google Gemini draws information directly from the internet through a Google search to provide the latest information. The Plus membership gives unlimited access to avoid capacity blackouts.
It was founded by a group of entrepreneurs and researchers including Elon Musk and Sam Altman in 2015. ChatGPT is similar to the automated chat services found on customer service websites, as people can ask it questions or request clarification to ChatGPT’s replies. ChatGPT shows inconsistent responses, lack of specificity, lack of control over patient data, and a limited ability to take additional context (such as regional variations) into consideration. The ChatGPT-generated avatar told the people, “Dear friends, it is an honor for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year’s convention of Protestants in Germany”.
One of the biggest ethical concerns with ChatGPT is its bias in training data. The chatbot could then impersonate a trusted person to collect sensitive information or spread disinformation. ChatGPT can also be used to impersonate a person by training it to copy someone’s writing and language style. There are online tools, such as Copyleaks or Writing.com, to classify how likely it is that text was written by a person versus being AI-generated. ChatGPT can be used unethically in ways such as cheating, impersonation or spreading misinformation due to its humanlike capabilities. There is no limitation to the types of questions to ask ChatGPT.
This feedback helps augment ChatGPT with machine learning to improve future responses. The GPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” which refers to how ChatGPT processes requests and formulates responses. According to Judge Neals in October 2025, a law-school intern used ChatGPT in the legal research for the opinion. In July 2024, the American Bar Association (ABA) issued its first formal ethics opinion on attorneys using generative AI.
In the 2020s, the rapid advancement of deep learning-based generative artificial intelligence models raised questions about the copyright status of AI-generated works, and about whether copyright infringement occurs when such are trained or used. ChatGPT Pro users have access to GPT-4.5, a general-purpose model that aims to provide human-like interactions. Despite decades of using AI, Wall Street professionals report that consistently beating the market with AI, including recent large language models, is challenging due to limited and noisy financial data. In October 2025, OpenAI reported that approximately 0.15% of ChatGPT’s active users in a given week have conversations including explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent, translating to more than a million people weekly.
Research in this area points to both potential benefits and risks of harm. The user can interrupt tasks or provide additional instructions as needed. It also inherits from Deep Research’s ability to gather and summarize significant volumes of information. It is capable of writing software, answering codebase questions, running tests, and proposing pull requests. This tool allows a user to customize ChatGPT’s behavior for a specific use case.