According to Thurrott.com, OpenAI is making group chats in ChatGPT available globally for all users after initially launching the feature in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan just one week ago. The rollout includes ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans with no restrictions. Group chats support up to 20 participants who can join via invitation links, and conversations aren’t saved to users’ personal ChatGPT memory. Group managers get special controls over ChatGPT’s response tone and length. The feature implements new “social behaviors” that help the chatbot follow conversation flow and decide when to respond versus stay quiet based on context.
The social AI challenge
Here’s the thing about group dynamics – they’re messy. People talk over each other, change subjects abruptly, and have inside jokes that outsiders don’t get. So how does an AI handle that? OpenAI says they’ve programmed “social behaviors” to make ChatGPT “follow the flow” and know when to chime in versus stay quiet. That’s actually a pretty sophisticated problem to solve. I mean, think about it – humans struggle with this constantly in group settings. If ChatGPT gets this right, it could be way more useful than just having another participant who constantly interrupts or goes off on tangents.
Microsoft playing catch-up?
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Microsoft is testing a similar groups feature in Copilot with some US users, but OpenAI just rolled this out globally across all plans. That’s a significant move in the AI assistant wars. Basically, while Microsoft is still in testing phase, OpenAI is giving this to everyone – free users included. That’s a pretty aggressive play for market share. And with up to 20 participants per group, this could become the default way teams collaborate on writing, brainstorming, or problem-solving using AI. The real question is whether Microsoft will accelerate their own rollout or try to differentiate with enterprise features.
The privacy angle
One clever detail here is that group chats don’t get saved to your personal ChatGPT memory. That’s actually smart – it means you can have work conversations or sensitive discussions without them polluting your main chat history. But it also raises questions about where that data does go and how it’s used for training. OpenAI’s walking a fine line between collaboration features and user privacy concerns. For business users especially, this could be a deciding factor between using ChatGPT groups versus sticking with more established collaboration tools that have clearer data governance policies.
