It was originally found This was heralded by Leaked Code and AI’s influence on Xbut OpenAI has made it official: ChatGPT now offers group chats, Allows multiple users to join a single, single chat conversation and send messages to each other through the Basic Language Model (LLM), online and its mobile apps.
Imagine adding ChatGPT as another member of your existing group chats, allowing you to send texts as if you were one of your friends or family members and reply to them as well, and you’ll get an idea of ​​the exciting power and potential of this feature.
However, this feature is currently available as a limited pilot for ChatGPT users in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan (all tiers, including free use).
“Group chats are the start of ChatGPT becoming a common place to collaborate and interact with others,” Openei wrote in its announcement.
This development is based on internal experiences at Openai, where the technical staff Ken Zhang said in a post on X The OpenAI team initially considered multiplayer chatbot “a wild, out-of-distribution idea”.
According to Zhang, the model’s performance in these initial tests demonstrated far greater potential than existing interfaces.
The move follows OpenAI investor yet rival Microsoft’s update to its Copilot AI assistant last month allowing group chats, as well as introducing sharable context and chat histories from its cloud AI models as a feature of its projects, though not simultaneous, real-time group chats.
Collaboration functionality integrated into ChatGPT
Group chats serve as shared conversation spaces where users can plan events, brainstorm ideas, or collaborate on projects with the added help of chat GPT.
These conversations are separate from individual chats and are removed from Chat GPT’s memory system. No data from these group threads is used to train or personalize future interactions.
Users can start a group chat by selecting the people icon in a new or existing conversation. Adding others creates a copy of the original thread while preserving the source dialog. Participants can join via a shareable link and are prompted to create a profile with name, username and photo. This feature supports 1 to 20 participants per group.
Each group chat is listed in a new section of the Chat GPT interface, and users can manage settings such as naming the group, adding or removing participants, or silencing notifications.
Powered by GPT 5.1 with extended tools
The new group chat feature runs on GPT-5.1 Auto, a backend configuration that selects the optimal model based on the user’s subscription tier and prompts.
Functionality such as search, image generation, file upload, and dictation is available within group conversations.
Importantly, the system only applies rate limits when the chat is generating a GPT response. Direct messages between human users in a group do not count against any plan’s message cap.
Openai has added new social features to ChatGPT to support this group dynamic. The model can react with emojis, interpret the context of a conversation to decide when to respond, and personalize content created using members’ profile photos — such as inserting the user into the photos when asked.
Privacy by default, controls for younger users
Openei emphasizes that privacy and user control are integral to group chat design. This feature operates independently of the user’s personalized chat GPT memory, and no new memories are created from these interactions.
An invitation link is required to join, and members are always able to see who’s in the chat or leaving at any time.
Users under the age of 18 are automatically protected from sensitive content in group chats. Parents or guardians can completely disable group chat access through built-in parental controls.
Group creators retain special permissions, including immunity from removal by others. All other participants can be added or removed by group members.
A testbed for collaborative AI experiments
OpenEye frames group chats as an initial step toward AI-rich, multi-user applications, signaling ChatGPT’s broader ambitions as a shared workspace. The company expects to expand accessibility over time and improve how early users engage with the feature.
Ken Zhang’s post shows that the underlying model’s capabilities go far beyond the interfaces that users currently interact with. Openei believes this pilot offers a new “container” where the model’s more enduring potential can be unleashed.
“Our models have a lot more room to shine than today’s experiments, and existing containers only use a fraction of their potential,” Zhang said.
With this initial pilot focused on a limited set of markets, Openai is likely monitoring both usage patterns and cultural fit as it plans a wider deployment. For now, the Group Chat experience offers users a new way to interact with ChatGPT—and with each other—in real time, using a conversational interface that blends productivity and personalization.
Developer Access: Still unclear
Openei has not provided any indication that group chats will be accessible through the API or SDK. The current rollout is developed strictly within the ChatGPT product environment, with no mention of tool calls, developer hooks, or integration support for programmatic use. This absence of signaling makes it unclear whether the company sees group interaction as a future developer artifact or simply as a UX feature for end users.
For enterprise teams looking to replicate multi-user collaboration with production models, any existing implementation will require custom orchestration—such as managing multi-party contexts and signaling in separate API calls, and handling session state and response-integrated session state. Until OpenAI provides official support, group chats remain a closed interface feature rather than a developer-accessible capability.
Here’s a standalone prepared for the article, focusing on what the ChatGPT group chat rollout means for pilot regions and enterprise decision makers globally:
Implications for enterprise AI and data leaders
Enterprise teams are already gearing up to take advantage of the AI ​​platform-or-opinion’s group chat feature, which introduces a new layer of multi-user collaboration that could transform how generative models are deployed in workflows. Although the pilot is limited to users in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan, its design and roadmap offer important signals to AI engineers, orchestration experts, and data globally.
AI engineers managing large language model (LLM) deployments can now begin to envision real-time, multi-user interfaces not just as support tools, but as collaborative environments for research, content production, and theory. This adds another frontier to model tuning: not only how the models respond to individuals, but also how they behave in live group settings with changing contexts and different user intentions.
For AI orchestration leads, the ability to integrate ChatGPT into collaboration flows without exposing private memory or requiring custom builds can reduce friction in piloting generative AI across cross-functional teams. These group sessions can serve as a lightweight alternative to internal tools for brainstorming, prototyping, or knowledge sharing.
Enterprise data managers may also find use cases in structured group chat sessions to support data interpretation, classification validation, or internal training. The system’s lack of memory persistence adds a level of data isolation that is compatible with standard security and compliance practices — although a global rollout will be key to validating regional data handling standards.
As group chat capabilities evolve, decision makers should monitor how shared usage patterns can inform future model behaviors, auditing requirements, and governance structures. In the long term, features like these will impact not only how organizations interact with generative AI, but also how they design team-level interfaces around it.