OpenAI has decided that chatting with an AI solo is officially passé. The company has unveiled group chats for ChatGPT, its first shared experience for everyday users, letting friends, family, and coworkers gather in a single conversation with an AI referee presiding over the chaos. The feature is launching as a pilot in just four regions for now: Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan. OpenAI says it plans to expand access once it collects early feedback (and once ChatGPT has recovered from its first million WhatsApp-style family arguments). “Group chats let you bring friends, family, or coworkers into a shared space to plan, make decisions, or work through ideas together,” OpenAI explained.
The feature functions as the company’s answer to collaboration tools from Meta AI and Anthropic, but it’s built directly into ChatGPT’s familiar interface. Starting a group is as simple as tapping the new people icon in the corner of the app. ChatGPT then generates a shareable link that anyone—free or paid users alike—can use to join. Up to 20 people can crowd into one conversation, which is either the perfect recipe for teamwork or a guaranteed way to never reach consensus again. Converting a one-on-one chat into a group creates a duplicate thread, keeping private messages private while the group gets a clean slate.
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Participants can set a profile name, username, and photo so everyone knows who’s talking (and who’s overusing emojis). Group chats get their own spot in the sidebar, ready to be reopened for planning vacations, co-writing presentations, or bickering over dinner plans with a dash of AI diplomacy.
Inside group chats, ChatGPT behaves differently. Instead of responding to every message, it observes the flow and jumps in when it’s useful. Anyone can also tag it directly—think of it as a patient coworker who never complains. And yes, ChatGPT can now react to messages with emojis. If you’ve ever wanted a robot to give your idea a silent thumbs-up, congratulations: the future is here.
Group creators can add or remove participants, while anyone can rename the chat or mute notifications—an essential feature if your group includes at least one overly enthusiastic texter. Each group can also have its own custom instructions, allowing ChatGPT to stay professional in your work chat and delightfully unhinged in your meme group without mixing personas.
Behind the scenes, group chats run on GPT-5.1 Auto, which picks the best model available to each participant. That means a Pro subscriber and a free user can be in the same chat but receive responses tailored to their individual model tiers—a curious but handy twist.
All major ChatGPT features work in group chats too, including web search, file sharing, image generation, dictation, and uploads. In practice, a group could plan a road trip, crunch expenses, generate the poster, and design matching T-shirts without leaving the thread.
Privacy and parental controls
OpenAI says private memory won’t carry over to group chats, and the AI won’t store shared content. Anyone can leave a group at any time—except the creator, who can’t be kicked out. If a minor joins, sensitive-content filters activate automatically for everyone. Parents can also disable group chats entirely.
For now, the feature is still in test-drive mode. But once it rolls out globally, ChatGPT group chats could become the internet’s newest meeting room, study buddy, party planner, and group therapist all at once.
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