OpenAI is piloting a new group chat experience designed for socialization and work collaboration with ChatGPT, taking aim at Slack and Microsoft Teams. “Whether you’re organizing a group dinner or drafting an outline with coworkers,” OpenAI wants to make ChatGPT the place you do it. Group chats are beginning to roll out on mobile and web for logged-in users on ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan. OpenAI says the pilot is “a small first step toward shared experiences in ChatGPT.” The company plans to collect early user feedback to inform further development.

The chats work with one to 20 people, and users can invite others directly by sharing a link and any group member can share that link to bring others in.

To start a group chat tap the people icon in the top right corner of any new or existing chat. “When you add someone to an existing chat, ChatGPT creates a copy of your conversation as a new group chat so your original conversation stays separate,” OpenAI explains in a news post.

When initiating or joining your first group chat, “you’ll be asked to set up a short profile with your name, username, and photo so everyone knows who’s in the conversation,” OpenAI says, adding that group chats will be identified in a newly created and labeled section of the sidebar for easy access.

“Group chats are separate from your private conversations, and your personal ChatGPT memory is never shared with anyone in the chat,” according to OpenAI.

“The announcement comes after earlier reports that OpenAI had been testing a direct-message-style tool,” writes TechCrunch.

“GPT‑5.1 Auto handles responses and comes loaded with features such as search, image generation, file uploads, and dictation,” TechCrunch adds, noting that “in group chats, ChatGPT’s usage limits — which restrict how many AI responses users can receive per hour — only count when ChatGPT responds.” Group chat messages authored by humans don’t count toward these limits.

The move comes in the wake of Microsoft’s group chat update to Copilot AI, writes VentureBeat, noting “Anthropic also has a “shareable context and chat” feature dating from 2024 that is not real-time chat.