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ChatGPT app arrives for Android, but there’s a catch

By Trevor Mogg July 25, 2023

OpenAI’s ChatGPT app is now available for Android, but not everyone can get it right away.

At launch, those in the U.S., India, Brazil, and Bangladesh can download the app from the Google Play Store, with “additional countries” being added “over the next week,” OpenAI said.

The rollout mirrors the one for the iPhone two months ago, which launched first in the U.S. before being made available more widely a few days later.

Until now, Android users could still use the popular AI-powered ChatGPT chatbot on their phones, but only via a mobile web browser. As you’d expect, the app offers a friendlier interface for improved ease of use.

The listing on the Google Play Store reveals that the app is free, syncs your history across devices, and will incorporate the latest improvements from OpenAI as and when they become available.

You can use the app to get answers to questions, find creative inspiration, learn stuff, create summaries, get advice, draft messages, and so on.

Just be careful what you do with its responses, however, as the AI-powered tech, while highly impressive for how it converses in a human-like way, is still in its relatively early stages and can be known to spit out erroneous information — with dire consequences — from time to time.

OpenAI signaled that the Android app was imminent when it added a listing for it on the Google Play Store a few days ago. And then on Tuesday, an “install” button showed up, allowing for downloads.

The ChatGPT app for iPhone saw a huge number of downloads upon its release, so OpenAI will be expecting to see the same for the Android version.

Not up to speed with ChatGPT? Digital Trends has a page featuring everything you need to know about the viral chatbot.

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Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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OpenAI’s new ChatGPT app is free for iPhone and iPad

The ChatGPT website on an iPhone.

OpenAI has just launched a free ChatGPT app for iOS, giving iPhone and iPad owners an easy way to take the AI-powered tool for a spin.

The new app, which is able to converse in a remarkably human-like way, is available now in the U.S. App Store and will come to additional countries “in the coming weeks,” OpenAI said. Android users are promised their own ChatGPT app “soon.”

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Forget ChatGPT — Siri and Google Assistant do these 4 things better

AI assistants compared with ChatGPT.

“Hey Google, Arbab!” I utter these lines to Google Assistant, which automatically takes me to my Twitter DMs with my friend Arbab. That chain of actions happens because I customized one such shortcut for Google Assistant on my phone. Putting the same prompt before ChatGPT, I get the predictably disappointing response: "I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I do not have access to personal contact information such as phone numbers or email addresses.”

That’s just one of the dozen walls that you will run into if you seek to embrace ChatGPT while simultaneously ditching mainstream options like Google Assistant. One wonders why ChatGPT – considered by evangelists as the pinnacle of a consumer-facing AI in 2023 – fails miserably at something as fundamental as sending a message.

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You can now video chat with a ChatGPT AI — here’s what it looks like

Call Annie ChatGPT app on an iPhone.

Showing up to a videoconference as your digital avatar can be quite fun. Apple lets you do just that with Memojis during FaceTime. If you want something more ambitious on a different platform, Avatarify will turn into Albert Einstien or Mona Lisa for Zoom calls. But what if you could bring an AI conversation to life? Say, by talking to ChatGPT as if OpenAI’s AI was a CGI person talking to you on a video call?
Well, that’s now possible. Call Annie is an app that turns ChatGPT into Annie, a talking female avatar that doesn’t look like a glitchy visual mess. Developed by Animato.Ai, the app is currently exclusive to iOS 16, but you can also use it on macOS 13 machines with an M-series processor inside.

A ChatGPT-powered video call in action
https://twitter.com/frantzfries/status/1651316031762071553?s=20
Another limitation is that you need at least the iPhone 12 or a later model to start a video call with Annie because the real-time conversion of linguistic prompts into visual cues draws power from Apple’s Neural Engine.
The app’s makers claim that talking to Annie “face-to-face in real time time feels more natural and faster than typing and reading text.” So far, the sample videos we have seen on social media, like the one above, show a fairly convincing video call interface.
Right now, Annie appears to be pretty good at holding a fluent conversation, even though the voice sounds robotic, and the phrase pausing could also use some work. The answers, however, are typical of the answers you would get while texting back-and-forth with ChatGPT. And given enough time and improved voice training, Call Annie interactions can become a lot more natural-sounding.
It all brings back memories of the sci-fi flick Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with one such AI. One user asked on Reddit whether Annie can have a “memory” system that will turn it into a smarter “friend,” to which the app developers replied with “soon.”
https://twitter.com/jakedahn/status/1651285054591750144
This is only the beginning for Annie
Users who have tried the app note that it occasionally flubs the pronunciation of words, but once corrected, it also learns right away. One user described this experience as “scary stuff.”Another issue it has is with pronouncing words in languages other than English, something that the developers are trying to fix.
Thanks to its ChatGPT smarts, the app’s developers say it can help you with everything from learning and web searches to serving as a tour guide or even a virtual companion. We don’t know if it’s as smart as other virtual partner apps like Replika, but considering the fact that Annie is based on ChatGPT (and its vast data training model), you can have a significantly deeper and fact-driven conversation with Annie.
Animato’s App Store description notes that the AI keeps all conversations “confidential” but hasn’t specified what kind of security measures have been put in place and whether it uses the user conversations for training and refining Annie’s systems.