ChatGPT Launches Group Chats Worldwide

ChatGPT is officially rolling out group chats to users across the globe, covering all account tiers — Free, Go, Plus, and Pro — OpenAI announced on Thursday. This expansion follows a small pilot last week in a handful of regions, including Japan and New Zealand.

The new feature brings shared conversations to ChatGPT, allowing multiple people to collaborate with the AI in a single thread. OpenAI says this upgrade shifts ChatGPT from being a simple one-on-one assistant into a collaborative environment where friends, family, classmates, and colleagues can plan, brainstorm, and make decisions together.

According to the company, group chats can help people organise trips, draft team documents, resolve disagreements, or conduct research. At the same time, ChatGPT assists by summarising information, searching for answers, and comparing ideas.

Group chats can include up to 20 participants, as long as each person accepts an invitation. OpenAI notes that personal settings and memory remain private to every individual user.

Image Credits: OpenAI

To start a group conversation, users can tap the people icon and add others manually or share an invite link. Everyone joining will be prompted to create a simple profile that includes a name, username, and photo.

Significantly, adding someone new to an ongoing chat does not modify the original thread — instead, it creates a brand-new conversation for the updated group.

OpenAI says ChatGPT is designed to understand when to chime in and when to stay in the background during group interactions. Participants can tag “ChatGPT” to bring it into the discussion. The AI can also react with emojis and recognise profile photos as it responds.

The launch highlights OpenAI’s continued shift toward making ChatGPT feel more like a social platform. The company views this as an early step toward transforming the assistant into a shared collaborative space, rather than a single-user experience.

“Over time, we see ChatGPT playing a more active role in real group conversations, helping people plan, create, and take action together,” OpenAI wrote in an email to TechCrunch.

This announcement arrives shortly after the debut of GPT-5.1, which introduced both Instant and Thinking modes. And back in September, OpenAI released Sora, a social video app where users generate clips of themselves or friends and share them on a TikTok-style feed.