OpenAI has announced the global launch of group chat functionality for ChatGPT, making the feature available to all users across Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans. The announcement, made on Thursday, follows a pilot phase initiated last week in select regions, including Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan.
The new feature is designed to enable collaborative conversations among users and ChatGPT within a single shared environment. OpenAI states that this expansion transforms ChatGPT from a one-on-one assistant into a platform for groups, facilitating collective planning, content creation, and decision-making among friends, family, or colleagues.
According to OpenAI, the group chat capability is intended to assist users in coordinating travel plans, co-authoring documents, mediating discussions, and conducting research collaboratively. In these scenarios, ChatGPT is positioned to support activities such as information searching, summarization, and comparative analysis of options.
Group chats can accommodate up to 20 participants, who join by accepting an invitation. The company has clarified that individual user settings and memory remain private to each participant. To initiate a group chat, users access a dedicated people icon to add participants directly or by sharing an invitation link. Each new participant is prompted to create a brief profile with their name, username, and a photo. Adding individuals to an ongoing chat creates a distinct new conversation, leaving the original chat unaltered.
OpenAI also detailed ChatGPT's behavior within these group settings, indicating the AI is programmed to respond contextually and can be specifically prompted by tagging "ChatGPT." The system can also react to messages using emojis and reference user profile photos.
This global rollout marks a further step in OpenAI's strategy to evolve ChatGPT beyond its initial chatbot role into a more integrated social and collaborative platform. This development follows recent product introductions, including the GPT-5.1 model, which offers both Instant and Thinking versions, and the Sora app, a social video generation platform launched in September, signaling the company's continuous expansion of its AI offerings into broader interactive and social applications.
