ChatGPT Picks Up Key Upgrades On iOS, Including Siri And Shortcuts Support
OpenAI released an official app for iOS less than a month ago, and now, the company has released an update that adds some neat new features and tailors the app for iPads. Starting with the iPad optimization, the app now scales fully to the larger screen, instead of simply running a scaled version of the iPhone app. The rest of the UI elements, however, remain identical, so you'll feel right at home running the app on one of Apple's tablets.
When you launch the app, you will be greeted by a familiar ChatGPT splash screen. At the bottom is the search bar where you enter your text prompt in order to get answers from the AI chatbot. In one corner, you will also find the option to enter a voice prompt if you don't feel like typing away a lengthy query. In the top-right corner sits the hamburger menu icon for accessing the Settings section, starting a new chat, or accessing your conversation history.
On the Settings page, you get options to buy the ChatGPT Plus subscription to access the more advanced GPT-4 language model, tweak your language preferences, adjust the dark/light mode viewing, and more importantly, whether you want to give your chat data to OpenAI for training purposes to further improve its product.
Supercharging Siri, one shortcut at a time
The bigger change that arrives with the latest ChatGPT app update is the Siri integration and Shortcut support. The former allows you to pull up ChatGPT using Apple's voice assistant. However, the more meaningful upgrade is Shortcuts support. Users can now head over to the Shortcuts app and create an automation routine for the ChatGPT app, create a one-tap Home Screen shortcut, and integrate it with other multi-stage routines.
OpenAI's release notes also mention support for drag and gestures. What that means is you can drag and drop your AI conversations from the ChatGPT app into another app installed on your phone. In my brief experience with the app's latest build, it works just fine on an iPad Pro with text input via the Magic Keyboard.
Notably, OpenAI's official mobile ChatGPT app is only available for iOS and iPadOS platforms. However, the AI lab has already confirmed plans to launch an Android app down the road. In the meanwhile, OpenAI is contending with increasing regulatory scrutiny and calls from experts, as well as industry stakeholders, to wait on innovation until an AI oversight authority is established to regulate AI development.