ChatGPT no longer requires an account — but there's a catch
OpenAI is making its flagship conversational AI accessible to everyone, even people who haven't bothered making an account. It won't be quite the same experience, however — and of course all your chats will still go into their training data unless you opt out.
Starting today
Starting today in a few markets and gradually rolling out to the rest of the world, visiting chat.openai.com will no longer ask you to log in — though you still can if you want to. Instead, you'll be dropped right into conversation with ChatGPT, which will use the same model as logged-in users.
What to expect
You can chat to your heart's content, but be aware you're not getting quite the same set of features as folks with accounts. You won't be able to save or share chats, use custom instructions, or other stuff that generally has to be associated with a persistent account.
That said, you still have the option to opt out of your chats being used for training. Just click the tiny question mark in the lower right-hand side, then click "settings," and disable the feature there.
More importantly, this extra-free version of ChatGPT will have "slightly more restrictive content policies." What does that mean? OpenAI mentioned that the "signed out experience will benefit from the existing safety mitigations that are already built into the model, such as refusing to generate harmful content. In addition to these existing mitigations, we are also implementing additional safeguards specifically designed to address other forms of content that may be inappropriate for a signed-out experience."
Concerns and Responses
Despite the added safety measures, the exact details of these content policies remain unclear. OpenAI will have to navigate potential misuse of the service, as the company acknowledged, "We’ve also carefully considered how we can detect and stop misuse of the signed-out experience, and the teams responsible for detecting, preventing, and responding to abuse have been involved throughout the design and implementation of this experience and will continue to inform its design moving forward."
What's next?
It's not clear what areas or groups will get access to this version of ChatGPT first, but the rollout starts today, so stay updated to find out if you're among the early adopters.
For more tech-related content like this, read Why it’s impossible to review AIs, and why TechCrunch is doing it anyway
