ChatGPT's Long-Awaited Android Version Is Here
After months of anticipation and less than a week after OpenAI teased its imminent arrival, the Android version of the ChatGPT app is finally available to download for select users across the globe. In this initial rollout phase, citizens from four countries — the United States, India, Bangladesh, and Brazil — can download and install ChatGPT for Android from the Google Play Store.
Initial impressions suggest the app and its UI elements were lifted straight from the existing iOS app, ultimately offering a nearly identical feature set. As with the iOS app and the desktop browser-based client, users of ChatGPT on Android can talk about anything they want, and the AI will try its best to generate informative and engaging responses.
ChatGPT for Android enables users to quickly log in to the service using multiple avenues. Once logged in, users get a blank area to jot down their queries, and upon hitting the send key, they can do the same things as on the desktop version of ChatGPT. Users can also view their previous chat history. Other features include support for dark mode and a data control option. Future versions of the app will also allow users to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus, a $20 per month tier that includes access to advanced features.
ChatGPT: The story so far
ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) chatbot developed by OpenAI. It was first released in November 2022 and quickly became one of the most popular AI chatbots on the market. ChatGPT is powered by OpenAI's GPT-3 family of LLMs, and it is trained on a massive dataset of text and code. This allows ChatGPT to generate realistic and informative responses to a wide range of prompts. In its current form, ChatGPT can be used for various purposes ranging from chatting with users about a wide array of topics and writing creative content (including poems and stories) to answering questions about the world.
The chatbot can also be used as a tool to translate languages and even generate code. Even though ChatGPT has become one of the most widely used Internet-based tools in a very short time span, OpenAI maintains that the tool is still under development. That, however, doesn't seem to have affected the chatbot's ever-increasing user base, which now exceeds 100 million users.
There is no denying that the Android app is a much-needed addition to the ChatGPT ecosystem, and it should make the AI chatbot accessible to a broader set of users. While it is still in its early stages, ChatGPT for Android brings all of ChatGPT's incredible potential into the hands of thousands of people who may not have access to desktop computers or laptops. In fact, this could also be one of the reasons for OpenAI to pilot-launch the Android app in emerging economies like India, Brazil, and Bangladesh, all of which have a large population with easy access to smartphones.