ChatGPT for iPhone now available in 46 countries and counting [U]

ChatGPT for iPhone launched in the US last week, with OpenAI promising that it would come to more countries “in the coming weeks.”

The next phase in the rollout has now happened earlier than expected, with 11 more countries added on Wednesday, and a further 35 today …

ChatGPT for iPhone

While you could of course access the ChatGPT website on your iPhone, an iPhone app makes it more convenient – especially as the app is free, and has no ads.

ChatGPT for iPhone will offer the same set of features as the web version of the service. This will include ChatGPT Plus support, which lets users subscribe to pay for more advanced versions of the service.

The app will also sync your ChatGPT history across all your devices, including the web. It also includes support for Whisper, OpenAI’s open-source speech-recognition system. This integration with Whisper enables voice input for the ChatGPT app on iPhone. The ChatGPT app is also completely ad-free.

Prior to its launch, there were a number of scam apps in the App Store before Apple started blocking them.

App comes to dozens more countries

OpenAI announced two further international expansions, meaning it is now available in all of the following countries:

• Albania
• Algeria
• Argentina
• Azerbaijan
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Canada
• Chile
• Costa Rica
• Croatia
• Ecuador
• Estonia
• France
• Germany
• Ghana
• Ireland
• India
• Iraq
• Israel
• Jamaica
• Japan
• Jordan
• Kazakhstan
• Korea
• Kuwait
• Lebanon
• Lithuania
• Mauritania
• Mauritius
• Mexico
• Morocco
• Namibia
• Nauru
• Nicaragua
• Nigeria
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Peru
• Poland
• Qatar
• Slovenia
• Tunisia
• New Zealand
• UK
• United Arab Emirates
• USA

The company says that more countries will be added “soon.”

Apple coming under fire

The impressiveness of generative AI systems like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Microsoft Bing & Copilot have led many to question why Apple is lagging behind – with many unkind comparisons with Siri.

Indeed, Apple has even banned its employees from using generative AI platforms for work projects.

We’ve already provided a large chunk of the answer, namely that it would simply be too risky at this stage. Large Language Models (LLMs) are very good at sounding intelligent, but far less good at actually being intelligent.

It’s also not like Apple is ignoring generative AI. CEO Tim Cook has praised its potential, is actively recruiting, and says that generative AI will transform its mobile products.

The company has long been an AI pioneer

But while Apple may be taking a cautious approach to chatbots, it’s worth remembering that Apple is an artificial intelligence pioneer – it’s simply that its AI achievements are more behind the scenes.

For example, while Siri may be criticized today, it was the first AI-powered natural language processing system to achieve mass-market adoption – more than a decade ago, back in 2011.

In 2016, Apple launched the iPhone 7 Plus, with the AI-powered computational photography feature, Portrait mode. A year later, the company had a dedicated AI chip in its phones, in the form of the Neural Engine within the A11 processor. This makes possible a wide range of AI-powered features:

• Face recognition in the Photos app
• Object recognition
• Augmented reality
• Center Stage
• Live Text
• Smart HDR
• Night mode
• Photographic Styles
• VoiceOver
• Duplicate photo detection

So the Cupertino company may not be diving into generative AI with abandon, but you can be sure it is doing some interesting work behind the scenes.