OpenAI has already implemented a new ChatGPT option the possibility of group chats. It is no world expansion but experimental in four countries, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan.
The point is to have friends, families or work teams discuss some topic with ChatGPT as a group member. You can talk to each other and invite ChatGPT to listen, brainstorm, summarise, suggest, or weigh in.
Think of him as an assistant bringing another willing worker into your group discussion.
This is the way the new group chat feature works:
- First, you have to press the people icon on a new or an existing ChatGPT chat. When you add people to a chat, ChatGPT will make a duplicate of your conversation thus leaving the original private.
- Invition of others is possible by sending a link. A group chat can involve up to 20 participants.
- Every member generates a small profile: name, username, photo, etc. in order to know people who who are who in the chat.
- The group rooms are located on the side bar of ChatGPT and are simple to use.
- ChatGPT has the ability to intervene in the conversation. As an illustration, making plans to go out on the weekend (where to visit, things to do, what to bring), creating a home or garden (topics, likes, ideas, requests), or completing some of my school/office tasks (an outline, summary of a research, shared document).
- ChatGPT has learned social behaviour the Chatbot will identify when to speak and when not to say anything, based on the conversation between two people. You can speak of it directly, in case you want to get its attention. It is capable of responding to emojis or profile photos to involve the chat.
- The group environment can be controlled: labelling a group, adding or deleting group members, switching off notifications, specifying how ChatGPT would choose to respond.
Privacy and safety is one of the main components of the rollout. OpenAI says it is imperative to keep in mind that you have two types of conversations: your one to one and your group. Group chat ChatGPT will not maintain your personal conversation history, and they will not construct new group chat long-term memory.
Additionally:
- Participants are visible in every member of the group chat (therefore, transparency is ensured).
- Their subjects may exit or be dismissed at will.
- On chat, the sensitive content will be blocked to the younger users (under 18), whereas the parents will be able to switch of the group chats feature as well.
At this point it is simply a pilot test in selected markets. OpenAI claims that its collaboration with ChatGPT aims to monitor the usage of both by individuals and learn the experience and feedback on the conditions and then extend it to more people.
The shift also indicates the change of ChatGPT as a one on one helper to a collaborative tool. You can multiply the chat with the bot to a real time conversation with a team instead of just chatting with the robot.
That creates numerous opportunities: education groups, work brainstorming, family organising, hobby clubs and so on. It introduces the conversational AI in a group.
This may be a significant increase in convenience to the user. As an illustration: a group of friends intending on a trip might request ChatGPT to suggest destinations, and compare prices, create a packing list, and so on, which can be talked about in the chat room.
Or a team may request ChatGPT to write an outline, and collaborate on it. The group environment implies that there is no necessity of switching between applications or copying and pasting.
It also brings up interesting questions as to how the AI manages to act in a group setting. The aspect of choosing whether and when to reply or remain silent is significant, as when ChatGPT showed up chime by chime, it could distract, whereas when not, it may be uncanny.
The power to refer to it directly puts the power in the hands of the users. Group owners have a certain control over the role of ChatGPT as they can set the settings that you can apply.
As a business and an educational tool, this may mean a lot. You can visualize a situation where you are speaking to students in the classroom and an AI helper is present, or you are working on a team project using Chatbots that are helping to research.
OpenAI will most likely have an interest in these contexts taking place in the pilot.
What to watch out for
- Although the privacy control is established, users are not supposed to be unaware of the implications of sharing data. Although ChatGPT may not be storing conversations of group chats, the dialogue is stored in the cloud.
- This feature is current in just some of the countries, with others such as those outside of Japan, New Zealand, South Korea or Taiwan not having access at all.
- OpenAI can impose restrictions or amendments depending upon the pilot, give participant constraints, adjust features (for higher priced levels) or implement additional safety measures.
- Group dynamics are not similar, during a group chat, multiple voices may be present, and the interaction between ChatGPT and the overlapping discussion or different topics will be of interest.
OpenAI has been trying to make ChatGPT be more group chat than individual assistant.
Repurposing the chat with up to 20 people, by allowing users to choose between chat and AI, the company hopes to enable additional collaborative use cases, whether between friends, or teams.
Although in its early deployment, the test is an encouraging indication of the potential future of how conversational AI will be integrated into the process of groups.
