ChatGPT No Longer Needs an Account, but There's a Catch

ChatGPT has required an OpenAI account since it first launched. That is now changing, as the tool will now allow limited access without registering an account.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced today that ChatGPT is now available to use instantly without creating an account. you’re able to try it out from thechat.openai.comweb app, or the official ChatGPT applications foriPhoneandAndroid. OpenAI said in a blog post, “Starting today, you can use ChatGPT instantly, without needing to sign-up. We’re rolling this out gradually, with the aim to make AI accessible to anyone curious about its capabilities.”

There are a few limitations with using ChatGPT without an account. you’re able to’t save and check your chat history, share chats, use voice conversations, or try custom instructions. You’re also limited to the standard GPT-3.5 AI model, just like free ChatGPT accounts—access to the more powerful GPT-4 model requiresa paid ChatGPT Plus subscription.

OpenAI has implemented “additional content safeguards” when using ChatGPT without an account, so if you use it without an account, you might run into more questions that ChatGPT won’t answer. Your conversations will also be used to train AI models, unless you opt out by clicking the help button and then opening the settings.

It was already possible to use the GPT language model without an account by using Microsoft Copilot, either in theCopilot web app, the iPhone or Android apps, or inside Microsoft’s other applications. However, Copilot’s access to web data from Bing makes it behave a bit differently, and there’s also a daily limit on messages. If you don’t want to create an account just to ask the GPT AI model a few questions, now you have two options. Meanwhile,Google’s Gemini AI modelstill requires a Google account.

ChatGPT accounts are already free, and stoppedrequiring phone verificationa while ago, so this isn’t a significant change in availability. However, it is a sign that the safeguards on generative AI are now sufficient enough to not require user registration for basic usage. It could also just be OpenAI making the free experience more accessible to help upsell ChatGPT Plus.