A week after launching an iOS version of ChatGPT in the U.S., OpenAI LP has expanded the app’s availability to 11 more countries.

The artificial intelligence startup announced the move late Wednesday. Its iOS app is now accessible to users in Albania, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Jamaica, Korea, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria and the U.K. The company said it plans to expand availability to additional countries “soon.”

Available at no charge, ChatGPT app provides access to the company’s popular chatbot service of the same name. Users also have access to a number of features not included in the web version.

The app includes an integration with Whisper, a speech recognition model that OpenAI released under an open-source license last year. Whisper enables users to dictate ChatGPT prompts with their voice. Additionally, a data synchronization feature makes it possible to share chat histories across multiple devices.

Users with a subscription to ChatGPT Plus, the paid version of the chatbot, have access to a broader set of features in the iOS app. One such feature is support for GPT-4, OpenAI’s newest and most advanced large language model. It powers not only ChatGPT Plus but also the AI assistant in Bing.

Like OpenAI’s earlier language models, GPT-4 can generate text, write code and solve math problems. But it’s significantly more adept at answering complex questions, particularly those that require reasoning. It’s also better at understanding the nuances of complex prompts.

Another key selling point of GPT-4 is its ability to take images as input. A user can, for example, upload a photo of a book and ask the chatbot to generate a summary.

When OpenAI launched its iOS app in the U.S. last week, it stated that Android support will be added down the road. The company’s development roadmap likely also includes feature enhancements. It’s plausible the iOS app will eventually receive support for plugins, which are currently only available in the web version of ChatGPT Plus.

In ChatGPT, plugins are integrations that enable the AI to interact with external datasets and cloud services. One such integration, announced by OpenAI investor Microsoft Corp. this week, connects the chatbot to Bing. The Bing plugin will enable users to have ChatGPT search the web for information not included in its internal dataset. 

Given OpenAI’s iOS app already offers access to ChatGPT Plus, it’s possible support will be added for the second paid version of the chatbot the company is currently developing. Called ChatGPT Business, the latter offering was previewed late last month. It will provide user management tools for enterprise customers as well as additional data management features. 

Image: OpenAI