OpenAI will give users access to its free ChatGPT generative AI chatbot starting Monday without having to sign up for the service, the Microsoft-backed startup said on Monday.
ChatGPT, which kicked off the GenAI boom in late 2022, can mimic human conversations and perform tasks such as creating summaries of long texts, writing poems and even generating ideas for a themed party.
The San Francisco company said it will roll out the feature gradually to “make AI accessible to anyone curious about its capabilities.”
The popular service, which set a record for the fastest growing number of users, has seen its growth slow since May 2023, when traffic peaked at 1.8 billion web visits, according to data analytics firm Similarweb.
OpenAI said it has introduced additional content safeguards for users who visit ChatGPT without logging in, such as blocking prompts and generations in a wider range of categories. These categories were not specified.
In addition to the free version of ChatGPT, which does not have direct access to the Internet, OpenAI also offers paid versions for individuals, team users and companies.
The company also said it can use user-supplied content to help improve its models for major languages, but said users can disable this feature.
The move comes about a month after billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for abandoning the startup’s original mission to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity and not profit. (Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru, Anna Tong in San Francisco and Krystal Hu in New York; Editing by Tasim Zahid)
