OpenAI said today that its ultra-popular artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT is now accessible without requiring a login.

The company, which boasts more than 100 million subscribers across 185 countries, said that it would begin rolling out the capability gradually with the “aim to make AI accessible to anyone curious about its capabilities.”

We’re rolling out the ability to start using ChatGPT instantly, without needing to sign-up, so it's even easier to experience the potential of AI. https://t.co/juhjKfQaoD pic.twitter.com/TIVoX8KFDB

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) April 1, 2024

As a basic experience, ChatGPT provides access to OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 generative AI model, which can mimic human conversations, answer questions, write poetry and even analyze documents of varying lengths. To get access to GPT-4, a much more complex and powerful model, users must sign up for the ChatGPT Plus subscription service, which also opens up web search.

OpenAI noted that when people chat with ChatGPT, their messages may be used to train the model. However, if they don’t want that to happen, they can opt out in the settings, even without logging in.

“We’ve also introduced additional content safeguards for this experience, such as blocking prompts and generations in a wider range of categories,” the company said in the announcement.

Of course, without an account, users will miss out on some of the more interesting capabilities that OpenAI has added to its chatbot recently. Such as the ability to save their chat history for later and voiced conversations. Users without accounts also cannot use custom instructions, which allow users to adjust how ChatGPT responds to their queries or remember basic information about them between different chat instances.

When users without an account visit chat.openai.com, they will get the same interface that logged-in users see, even if it is a greatly pared-down version. Users also cannot upgrade to the subscription version, ChatGPT Plus, which has even more perks for $20 a month, without signing up for an account.

Image: OpenAI