OpenAI just made ChatGPT a lot more social. The company has rolled out group chat functionality that lets users collaborate directly within the app, bringing AI assistance into group conversations for the first time.

From Pilot to Full Launch

The feature started as a limited test run in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan earlier this month. OpenAI called it a "small first step" toward creating a more "shared experience" in ChatGPT, inviting early users to provide feedback that would shape how the feature eventually expands to additional regions and offerings.

Now it's available more broadly. Users can plan events, make group decisions, and collaborate together while ChatGPT helps search, summarize, generate content, and keep everyone aligned. Think dinner planning, game nights with friends, or family trip coordination—basically any situation where multiple people need to work something out together.

The feature works across Free, Go, Plus, and Pro subscription tiers on both mobile and web platforms, making it accessible to essentially everyone using ChatGPT.

How Privacy and Safety Work

Private chats and personal ChatGPT memory stay completely private, according to OpenAI. Your individual conversations don't bleed into group settings.

Group chats themselves are invitation-only, and members can leave whenever they want. Most participants can remove others from the group, though the creator can only leave voluntarily—they can't be kicked out of their own group chat.

For users under 18, content gets filtered with additional safeguards and parental controls in place. "You can let ChatGPT respond automatically or only when mentioned by someone in the group chat, but your personal ChatGPT memory is never used," said AIPRM Engineer Tibor Blaho, who previewed the feature earlier this month.

The Slack Criticism Context

The timing here is interesting. This feature arrives after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly criticized Slack, saying he suspects it creates "a lot of fake work." During a "Conversations with Tyler" podcast earlier this month, Altman suggested that having an AI inside an app like Slack—where "you are trusting your AI agent and my AI agent to work most stuff out and escalate to us when necessary"—could be a better option.

So group chat in ChatGPT isn't just a new feature. It's potentially OpenAI's answer to workplace communication tools.

Setting Up and Using Group Chats

Starting a group chat is straightforward: tap the people icon and add participants, either directly or by sharing a link. Groups can include one to 20 people. If someone gets added to an existing chat, a new group is created while the original conversation stays unchanged. Each group has a short profile, and all chats appear in a labeled sidebar for easy navigation.

Group chats function like regular ChatGPT conversations but with multiple people participating simultaneously. GPT-5.1 Auto handles responses and includes features like search, image generation, file uploads, and dictation. ChatGPT's usage limits in group chats only count when the AI responds—messages between human participants don't eat into these limits.

Some features aren't available in group chats yet at launch. Canvas, Voice mode, Python/Data Analysis, Deep Research, Tasks, Connectors, Apps, and Agent mode remain accessible in other parts of ChatGPT depending on your subscription plan, but they haven't been integrated into group chats yet.

The Bigger Picture: OpenAI Goes Social

This group chat feature represents the latest step in OpenAI's gradual transformation from a simple AI assistant into something resembling a social platform. In late September, the company launched Sora 2, a standalone social media app with a TikTok-style feed for sharing AI-generated videos. It comes complete with algorithmic recommendations based on user activity and location, parental controls, and direct messaging capabilities.

Add group chat to the mix, and you can see where this is heading. OpenAI isn't just building AI tools anymore—it's building the infrastructure for how people communicate and collaborate with AI in the middle of it all.