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ChatGPT app for iOS (openai.com)
675 points by rememberlenny on May 18, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 404 comments



This release is more relevant as there have been very many fake ChatGPT apps that leveraged OpenAI's branding.

Case in point, the App Store release app subtitle is "The official app by OpenAI"


Can't find the chart, but several of those wrapper apps made $1MMs in revenue too

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/fake-chatgpt-apps-raking-tho...

The Chart: https://i.imgur.com/IYC0Pcb.png


Why not? Isn't that the business model of OpenAI? Provide access to the APIs for wrappers that are not their own products - simple as they may. Bradgpt comes to mind


What's BradGPT?


Probably "BratGPT: The evil older sibling of ChatGPT" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35971677


I was about to post a snarky let me Google that for you link, but I couldn't find anything relevant for bradgpt.


Maybe a typo for Google Bard?


Interesting, yes, that make sense, there should be resellers. It is not clear how much of that money ended up going to Apple and paying for the OpenAI API access.

Is Apple going to get their cut from the paying customers of OpenAI, by the way?


If they are probably they won't say it


Why is act like it’s some great conspiracy? If you subscribe through the App Store, Apple gets 30%. If you don’t, Apple won’t.


> If you subscribe through the App Store, Apple gets 30%.

15%. The only companies that pay 30% are the ones earning over a million dollars a year from things other than long-term subscriptions.


Want that only on year 2 though? First year at 30%. Regardless I expect open ai to do well over a million or year


No, you can apply for the 15% fee, a.k.a. the App Store Small Business Program, right from the start.

> If your proceeds surpass the 1 million USD threshold in the current calendar year, you will no longer be eligible for the program and the standard commission rate will apply to your future sales.

Source: I did it myself two months ago, no problem.


no. and you won’t be able to start paying from inside the app.


You must be able to start the subscription from inside the app:

3.1.3(b) Multiplatform Services: Apps that operate across multiple platforms may allow users to access content, subscriptions, or features they have acquired in your app on other platforms or your web site, including consumable items in multi-platform games, provided those items are also available as in-app purchases within the app.


[flagged]


But yet they do…


They do what? They do not need to. But they ARE, because they want to. You and the other simply misunderstand that Apple rule because it's written strangely. Do YOU have first hand experience with this rule? Go do your research.


Feel free to clarify what the rule means. I publish multiple apps per week and have encountered this rule enough times in exactly the way I mentioned it.


look at Spotify, edtech products etc


You can start a ChatGPT Plus subscription from inside the linked app.


Then “yes” and now we know something about openai margins


If you actually check, they do offer subscriptions in the app. I just downloaded it and checked it out myself. Click the … icon, then Settings, then “Upgrade to ChatGPT Plus”. It’s the same price point as if you buy directly from OpenAI, but Apple gets 15% or 30%.


You mean you won’t be able to start the subscription from the app by clicking on the “Upgrade to ChatGPT Plus” right on the settings panel in the app?


no


You realize you can subscribe within the app right?


Ya


It seems rather unwise of Apple to invite that OpenAI/Plugin marketplace without some kind of an agreement.

No plugins right now in the App, but they’ll be coming, no?


Plugins work fine in the app. It’s just a nice webview basically.


Why would they do something special? This already exists. Apple is fine with it as long as they don’t solicit payment in the app / direct users outside the app.



Thanks, I was looking for the source.

Where are you getting this data from? How would any one site know the revenue numbers of multiple competing apps like that, with any degree of confidence?


appmagic.rocks

this is analytics service like appannie (data.ai), sensor tower etc. they plug into apps analytics and collect data for a lot of apps, extrapolating the collected data on all other apps. usually both revenue numbers and downloads are pretty spot on


Did they ask for api keys? If not wouldn’t that cost a lot to profess requests


>very many fake ChatGPT apps

But its for our security to have a closed ecosyste---Walled Garden. Woah there, almost didn't stick to the marketing that we were all taught.


There's nothing "fake" about those apps at least upon surface level investigation: OpenAI sold access to the ChatGPT and GPT-4 API, so opportunistic people made chat apps "powered by" ChatGPT and GPT-4. They would be "fake" if they claim to be made by OpenAI, which they don't.

So, on what ground do you suggest they should be blocked from submission? Slapping a custom UI on a third party API is fine, if a bit distasteful in certain situations. Tons of people on this very forum work on glorified wrappers.


> They would be "fake" if they claim to be made by OpenAI, which they don't.

Very many did that or implied an association with OpenAI, which is why OpenAI had to release updated branding guidelines (https://openai.com/brand) and started enforcing takedowns against apps/domains using GPT in their name.


Sure, I was looking at the top apps just now. Apparently OpenAI is explicitly okay with WhateverChat powered by ChatGPT.


This is pretty typical for the App Store / Play Store and isn’t anything particular to OpenAI. If there is a third-party service Foo that app Bar uses, then “Foo Bar” is questionable for trademark reasons and the common practice is to use “Bar for Foo” instead.


Here’s an interesting real-time shift in language happening.

You just referred to these things as ‘chat apps’.

And that seems reasonable - they use a chat interface.

But they aren’t ‘chat apps’ as we would have understood them a few months ago. They don’t let you chat with people. They let you chat with an LLM.

Is the word ‘chat’ changing its meaning?


The term "chatbot" has been around for a while so it's not really new to "chat" with a bot rather than a human


"Is the word ‘chat’ changing its meaning?"

Judging by the number of recently-launched apps that invite the user to "chat with PDFs" or "chat with documents", it would appear so.


it changed the moment the product and api were named chatgpt …


> So, on what ground do you suggest they should be blocked from submission? Slapping a custom UI on a third party API is fine, if a bit distasteful in certain situations.

I recall about a month of Show HN being largely populated by this same soft of thing. I'm definitely not arguing with misrepresentation of an official OpenAI app but there's a lot of this happening inside and outside the app store.


I don’t recall ever hearing Apple PR calling iOS a “walled garden”. Outside of tech I doubt most people would understand what that means. The operative word is “curated”.


I too am surprised to learn Apple PR have never used a mild pejorative to describe their own product.


So well curated, it seems.


“Curated” means “selected by experts”, not “good”. You can expertly curate for what makes you the most money, above all other metrics.


I'm pretty sure they advertised the curation as being for our benefit as users.


It's walled garden enough in that any developer that try to present their app to be associated with OpenAI or as an official app get their app rejected.


[flagged]


It's suggesting that "the prevalence of 'fake' ChatGPT apps on the App Store" undermines reasons Apple has used to defend everything having to be installed through the App Store & Apple's app review process (e.g. lack of side loading, or taking such a high percentage out of app-related purchases).


I’m not a 100% fan of having a single app store, but if those apps are ‘fake’ in quotes they aren’t really fake, ‘just’ confusingly named, are they?

If so, on what grounds could Apple deny them from being on the App Store?

Given the enormous amount of apps using trademarked names in their name or description, I also guess trademark owners cannot request Apple to remove those apps.

What Apple IMO should improve, though, is its search functionality.

For example, when I search for “company name product name” (examples: “Microsoft Excel”, “Apple Numbers”, “Google Maps”), the top hits should be “Microsoft Excel”, “Numbers”, respectively “Google Maps - Transit & Food” (what marketeer came up with that name? To me, that signals “not the real Google Maps”)


There is probably no other reason to bring this app to iOS and Android. ChatGPT works very well as a PWA added to home screens.


The typical nontech user doesn't know what a PWA is, which is why native apps in the App Store are still very important.


I think most of the OpenAI's target audience must be technical enough to know they can access websites on a smartphone and bookmark them in some way.

They probably just want to fight abuse/spam/fraud/scams that are on the App Store/Play store so that it would stop devaluing their brand. "ChatGPT charged my card $299 without permission, I am going to the press!" is a disaster waiting to happen with these scammy apps.


The ChatGPT webapp audience is almost entirely nontechnical, which is the primary reason it went viral and so many people got fooled by fakes.

It is different from developers who are using the ChatGPT API to build apps.


Really? So many people tell me how great ChatGPT is at helping development and developers are pretty much by definition technical people.

Also, the signup process is far from easy. People here often cry about how "difficult" it is to sign up for Mastodon or Matrix etc and that is why the mainstream don't use it. Yet this is the same :)


ChatGPT is great for nontechnical people and technical people!


Not at all - loads of people use ChatGPT. Far, far more than would know about PWAs.


ChatGPT is not a PWA, so it does not work very well if you do that. However I agree that if it were a PWA, it could work very well.


I mostly agree, but the average person doesn't know that's even an option. They hear "You should use ChatGPT!" and they go straight to the app store to try it out.


That's probably a good thing. When non-technical users go looking for free apps outside of any official app store, the chances of installing malware go way up.

source: I used to do tech support for my family


The in-app purchase to upgrade to plus is very smooth…


Is the cancellation process just as smooth?


YES. It's extremely clear and easy, in multiple ways, both through the ChatGPT app and through the Subscriptions Tab in settings in iOS. This is one of those things that Apple does reasonable well, compared to some vendors.


Does the PWA also log you out every few days like the regular website? That really annoys me so much. Every few days I type a question in the GPT tab I always have open, it realises I was kicked out and shows me the login screen. After logging in my question is gone and I have to type it again. Grrr..


I’ve been using yakgpt as my go to chatgpt interface.. Does not have the problem you mention.


Honestly it would be great if PWAs worked better. It feels like it has been a half implemented solution. Not all features of Safari work inside a PWA, and it's unclear if you can now get push notifications. Having some access to device level features like you get with native through custom JS APIs would also be a huge win.

My understanding is that this might have been what Apple originally planned to do. However, the popularity of the App Store, IAP revenue, and the focus on services disincentivized them from pushing this route further.


Many non-technical users look for apps in the App Store.

That said, it's possible to package progressive web apps (PWAs) for listing in app stores: PWABuilder[0].

Disclaimer: I've worked on PWABuilder.

[0]: https://www.pwabuilder.com


On Android, an app can replace the voice assistant, which a PWA cannot do. I agree that there doesn't seem to be any user benefit of a ChatGPT app on iOS.


How does that work with voice input? I assume dictation?


I'm not answering your question, but I just tried voice input on the ChatGPT iOS app. They integrate their whisper model to directly do speech recognition, and it is always broken for me, with "There was an unexpected error (API.API.APIError, 0)" on any input. Of course, I can also just type the mic and use the normal iOS text-to-speech in the input box, and that works fine.


they would be better off sticking with Apple’s voice to text because it’s actually pretty good.


its basically impossible to find via app store search.


Yeah. I saw this announcement, and searched both "chatgpt" and "open ai" (sic, as auto-suggested) in the App Store and gave up scrolling looking for it. The unofficial app logos look waaaay closer to the ChatGPT logo than the official white logo does, and the SEO (ASO?) seems poor. Not sure what either party can do about it though, but it's a disappointing situation.


Isn’t this what the Apple 30% tax is supposed to help pay for and facilitate? If it doesn’t solve this problem, what is its purpose and value?


Yea, AppStore search is terrible. I often revert to my webbrowser/search engine to search for AppStore apps, because i can't find them in the AppStore.


It takes some time to index.


I just tried it and it was the first algorithmic listing. The first listing was for another app fir AI chat with a very familiar looking logo.


also had the same issue. Figured after the first page it would probably show up but I scrolled multiple pages and still nothing.


There’s a direct link on the article. It’s not available in my country though. Or at least that’s the error message I got.

Update:

“We're starting our rollout in the US and will expand to additional countries in the coming weeks”


My guess is OpenAI now has a case to ask Apple to remove these apps for trademark infringement and brand confusion. Obviously they can just rename themselves but keep the same functionality, but marketing themselves as ChatGPT is no longer going to fly.


I'm in Australia. Searching for "openai chatgpt" returns all those third-party wrappers, but not the official one.


Tried link from blog post - "App is currently not available in your country".

They say in the post they'll roll it out to other countries in the coming weeks.


I clicked on the link on my PC.

Noted the name of the app ("Openai ChatGP") and the description ("The official app by OpenAI")

I opened App Store on my iPhone and typed the name of the app, verbatim.

The official/correct app was not in the first 20 entries (which is as far as I was willing to scroll).

Which, to me:

1. Shows why an official app is needed even though the web version works perfectly fine on iPhone and is probably easier

2. Doesn't actually seem to solve the problem

3. Puts to shame all the touted benefits of a "walled garden/closed ecosystem".


The App Store has had a problem with cold starts for a few years now. I remember a few years ago when I worked on App Store search it was a known problem when apps like Disney+ were released and users were searching directly for a new app immediately.


Exactly this, it takes a few days before the app will be indexed.


"Cold start" problems are usually not about the app being indexed, but about the recommendation/ranking system being based on what other users have clicked on or downloaded.


Give it a try - deploy your iOS app with a totally unique name and let me know if you can find it.

It won't show in search results, no matter how many pages you scroll through.


I wonder what on earth takes a few days, this is not a DNS record...


Apple + The Web is a match made in hell.

All of their services that are network heavy (TV, iCloud, Apple Music, News, Safari Sync) are so slow and do huge full reloads of every bit of state, so you just constantly see loading spinners, or worse in iCloud, you see nothing and eventually it will pop all the new stuff in to view, with no way to force a refresh.

I get that CAP theorem exists, but other providers at least seems to understand opportunistic sync and do a job of making it work for the user, but Apple seems to think that inconsistent views over data can't be helped and that every user should understand eventual consistency.

Their SDKs for syncing data to iCloud have long been a joke in the developer community and I think there have been 3 attempts at getting CoreData -> iCloud working, with the last iteration NSPersistentCloudKitContainer often being used as the [butt of jokes, a case study on poor networking talent at Apple] among iOS developers.


I wouldn't be surprised if it's tuned based on what people tap after a query, popularity stats generally, or other similar stats, and so they rebuild it only every few days after accumulating more stats.

Establishing popularity at a point in time requires a window of time.

If I had to guess, they pick a window of a few days because if you did it every minute or even every hour, there might be wild fluctuation in the long tail of apps, depending on whether 8 or 0 people happened to download it in that time.

You could fix this by making window size inversely proportional to short-term popularity and running every 15 min, but that's just more effort to reason about and code and debug. It seems like something they absolutely should do, but I can see why it would be pushed down the backlog.


So it would be search of the app store a few days ago?


No, it would be a search of the app store string matches now, but ranked according to popularities from a few days ago.


DNS records don't take days


yes, sorry. Meant the indexing by search engines


DNS records take a minute or two to update


DNS records take a minute to update and take 24-48 hours to propogate to all nodes globally due to caching.

[0] https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx...


> ISPs have different cache refreshing intervals

They're omitting the detail that ISPs are violating the spec.

If you set your DNS TTL to 3600 seconds, a caching resolver should store both that and when they received the response. Then, when another client requests the same name in 30 seconds, it should pull the result out of the cache and send it to the client with a TTL of 3570 seconds. This way, once 3600 second pass from the authoritative query, all the cached data is expired everywhere. If you know you're about to make a change you can lower the TTL to 300 seconds an hour before you make the change, after which the change should only take 5 minutes to propagate.

Some ISPs ignore the TTL and tell all their clients that they can cache the result for 72 hours so the clients don't make as many queries to their DNS servers. If you find your ISP doing this, stop using their DNS servers (or stop using that ISP) because it can obviously cause you problems whenever anyone changes a DNS entry and your ISP is handing out a stale one for you to cache for days. Maybe just never use your ISP's DNS servers in general.


The CAP theorem.


I love my iPhone but god damn does apple suck at a number of things. It’s 2023, and they have a terabyte of storage but they won’t store more than 100 numbers in your call history. Like what.


How about being able to edit a copied phone number? Like maybe I want to add a country code? No, the only way to do it is to make a new contact and then edit it? Ok…

Or how about search a pdf on my phone? Really? I can’t? Huh… so random…


The phone number editing is the bane of my existence. I also want the option to automatically set the country code of a new number to either the current country I'm in or the country my SIM card is from.


I had an iphone for like 3 years before I found out how to do text search in Safari. Not sure why they make it so hard to find.


That's so weird, that's the first option on Android if you long-press a number on the call history.


> Or how about search a pdf on my phone?

Open it in iBooks, which also runs ocr on the pdf, and hit the magnifying glass.


I’ll try it, thanks!


Onedrive works well too.


The inability to add mp3 files to music in the phone is ridiculous. Round-tripping through "Files" or whatever when I can't quickly access my computer is just so obnoxious.


My favourite is that giving in and clicking the “open in app” banners on Reddit etc just take me to the App Store page for Reddit, even though I have the actual app installed already.


Pardon my ignorance but I sort of assumed that was reddit's fault because I can't name a single other site/service I use that does that. I guess that's not the case?


I have the same problem with Youtube links. Doesn't seem like a reddit only issue.


I have no issue with links opening directly into the YouTube app.


i think it might do that when the app has an update pending?


Apollo just auto-redirects to the app for me. Maybe it’s an issue with the official Reddit app or a config value somewhere?


You have to long-press on the link and press 'Open in "Reddit"'. Not sure why.


If you long press `open in app`, then it shows `open reddit` and that solves it


Oh, I didn't mean to start an iPhone rant, but if we're going there...

* Let me put the icon where I want it. seriously. if my OCD wants this icon on bottom right of my screen, let me!

* Let me have an icon in multiple places. if my OCD wants this app in both "Media" and "Entertainment" folder, let me!

* Allow me to put stuff onto the phone. Via USB. Like every other god damn device in the world.

* Allow me to take stuff off my phone. Via USB. Like very other freakin' device in the world.

(my wife knows the exact shriek that comes out of my home office every ~6months when I try to take all my photos off my iPhone or put some videos onto it for travel. I've given up every time. My co-workers who love iPhone always have a wonderful system that sounds like "Email it to yourself then FTP it to your dropbox account and then download it in the browser and then..... - I assume that's how XKCD got the idea https://xkcd.com/763/)

* Downloading and opening files is an incredible hit and miss of what happens where and how.

* 3.5mm. And yes I blame Apple for starting the trend :)

I have a list somewhere I wrote down when people ask me why my phone is called "iHateApple". I'll see if I can dig it up :)


> Allow me to put stuff onto the phone. Via USB. Like every other god damn device in the world. * Allow me to take stuff off my phone. Via USB. Like very other freakin' device in the world.

You need to use iTunes. There’s a file transfer tab somewhere. Or wait, it’s Finder now. They took the syncing out of iTunes. It’s also not called iTunes anymore I just realized. Ok, I’m old. :p


Now imagine a Windows user like myself.... :O


Not to get in the way of a good rant, but https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJYT2AM/A/lightning-to-sd... lets me copy photos to the phone just fine.


In which way does that allow me to move the files from computer to phone viabusb phone like every other device in the world?


The top four here are pretty much the biggest reasons I use an Android rather than an iPhone


I can't help but add... Please let me set the snooze timeout on alarms. Hard coded to seven minutes, really?


Have they fixed "an unattended iPhone alarm rings... forever" yet? I'm sure that's probably lead to disaster on more than one occasion. Imagine someone forgets an iPhone living next door to a shift worker? Alarm goes off and... never stops.


To #3, to users the benefit is absolutely nothing. There are still so many garbage apps.

To Apple, the benefit is enormous. What happens when garbage apps get better ranking? Companies pay for that sponsored position. Once they do, Apple then starts ranking them better and gets to claim they "monitor quality" when it was never about quality on the App Store.


15 years after introducing Apple Store it is still shit at finding apps, even though I am willing to pay. The search function is just a disaster. You need to use Google and the web to find anything.


My favorite is "Microsoft Authenticator" not being the first result when searching for it by name. I don't have an iPhone but I have to tell all my users to make sure the icon matches the registration page for O365's MFA registration.


Are you outside the US? I got the same results, but then realised it's only available in the US at the moment.


I am in the US and had the same issue - ended up installing it by finding the announcement post and clicking through from there.


I am in the EU and finding the announcement post and clicking on it gives me a blank page.


Even in US, if you search for e.g. "GPT" instead of "ChatGPT", the top search results are all third party apps, and some of them seem like they deliberately copy the official website look and feel.


Only available in the US right now


They are fighting an uphill battle against a never ending wave of products that are often well meaning but named too similarly too.

Not that HN wants to admit it when gpt4all gpt4free etc comes up


Is "GPT" a registered trademark in the AI space?


They did apply for one IIRC. Which is silly, but people apply to trademark all kinds of generic terms.


Are you outside the US? It seems to be region locked to US right now, so all of the third party frontend apps are all you see when searching from elsewhere.


This happens in the US too.


I just discovered this as well. If your iOS is out-dated (the app requires 16.1 or higher), it won't show the app in search result.


The web version is very far from perfect on an iPhone.

It keeps logging me out, the copying UX is subpar… And god forbid I lock my phone while I'm getting a completion back. It stops mid sentence and there is no way to continue with it. Which (locking one's phone for a bit while interacting with it) is a very valid use case if you are doing stuff with your hands and want to put the phone in your pocket for a bit.

I'm looking forward to the app.


“Perfectly fine” does not mean perfect, it means it’s usable. And it’s not like the parent commenter doesn’t agree that an app is useful.


'Perfectly fine' definitely doesn't mean 'usable' in my dictionary.

But I see that perhaps the parent didn't mean to say that the web version can do everything the app does, so I have edited my comment to be less confrontational. Thanks.


Right. OP here, FWIW, in my colloquial English (right or wrong:) "Perfect" is, well, perfect; does everything I want and cannot be meaningfully improved.

"Perfectly Fine" on the other hand, the key word is "fine". It is "eh. It mostly does the job. I cannot begrudge it too much. I have bigger things to rant about. It's perfectly fine."

"Fine" is like "Nice". It's fine. It's nice. Note quite "Good", let alone "Amazing". But it's fine. Perfectly so :)

(I empathize with all of your pain points, particularly the stopping of generation if my screen locks. I have employer-mandated iPhone which has draconian locking policies which are pretty close to average time of query generation. I wonder if app will have the same issue?)


So 'fine' is better than 'perfectly fine'?

(I’m not a native speaker.)


Perfectly fine means good enough


No, but perfect is much better than perfectly fine.


Yep, this is also my interpretation of the phrase.

I best equated it to "usable" since I agree it's "not quite good".


Try again tomorrow. 10:1 odds it will be the top entry.


> ...the web version works perfectly fine on iPhone

I imagine this is their MVP, and they're going to iterate and start adding more iOS specific stuff. It'd be nice to be able to hook it into Siri natively (since we can't just rip out Siri and replace it with ChatGPT).


Apple's search takes a bit to show new apps. Will likely be very prominent by tomorrow.


I had to open the link in my browser, then use the Safari tab sharing thing to open that same page on my phone, which then opened it in the store to the correct app, because I ran into the exact same problem.

Apple store search is a broken horrific joke.


Apple caught with pants down doing important app launch. I hope they are proud.


Yeah I had to visit this page on my phone and then click the direct link to find it.


> 1. Shows why an official app is needed even though the web version works perfectly fine on iPhone and is probably easier

Agreed that an official app is needed, clearly.

> 2. Doesn't actually seem to solve the problem

For now. Eventually it'll get sorted.

> 3. Puts to shame all the touted benefits of a "walled garden/closed ecosystem".

Despite having the same experience, I disagree with your conclusion.

It has nothing do with the "walled garden" and everything to do with Apple and OpenAI not paying attention to a rapidly emerging use case. The problem arose because OpenAI did not prioritize the initiative to make their own early enough, allowing hundreds of other developers to fill the void and muddy the waters, while Apple allowed these copycats into the App Store without really considering the customer experience.


We might yet find out whether we agree or disagree :), so let me be more narrow & specific:

* Apple is positioning their tight control over the appstore, including high fees to developers and restricted choice to consumers, as providing benefits of a curated & safe experience

* Do we feel that dozens of apps overlaying OpenAI ChatGPT, with various degrees of honesty and deception and monetization methods and privacy policies, are in-line with stated goals of the appstore, and with desires and best interests of the end-users?

My personal impression is "No". This is not to say I want the app store controlled more tightly - on the contrary; I am saying that I am not receiving benefits of the "walled garden / ecosystem" (and this is hardly the first example since iPhone was forced upon me by my employer:), i.e. I do not feel materially safer on AppleStore than I do on Google Play store; but I do feel materially obstructed/impacted when I want to install something that Apple for whatever reason does not.

Or in other words, without claiming anybody did anything particularly wrong here, if you're GOING to allow dozens of apps pretending to be the hottest new thing on the market on the app store, then just get out of my way and let me install what I want without pretense of curation and safety.


> Apple is positioning their tight control over the appstore, including high fees to developers and restricted choice to consumers, as providing benefits of a curated & safe experience

Let’s not pretend that it’s hurting the little developer.

It came out in the Epic trial that 80%+ of App Store revenue comes from in app purchases of play to win games.

The biggest players that aren’t games like Netflix, Spotify and other “reader apps” [sic] have forced you to do subscriptions outside of the app store for years.

Then other apps are physical goods where you don’t have to use in app purchases and they can use Apple Pay (regular credit card processing fees).


> while Apple allowed these copycats into the App Store without really considering the customer experience.

And what is Apple supposed to do in this case? Block independent devs from submitting valid apps? Then they’d be blamed for supporting big corp and monopolistic practices. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t.


I'd hope that Apple would at least block applications that are doing trademark infringement which it seems like they are doing if they show up when someone searches for OpenAI ChatGPT


They don't yet have a trademark so there's been no infringement for Apple to detect.


Canadian here can’t use it yet. Does it have access to preinstalled iOS apps like reminder? I use them daily with Siri which I really can’t be much fond of…


I’m guessing it keeps you logged in, will scroll/handle text more natively than the web, and opens up an app for who-knows-what in the future.

It’s the right call to make.


I was just going to post the same thing. Im not surprised someone else shared but im surprised it was the top comment.


fwiw, you seem to have left a "T" off the end


ChatGP, it's lights out and away we go!


The web version doesn't allow speech input.


Link worked for me just as expected.


Jeez, the app is impossible to find among all the fakes. I had to go to openai's website and use the link there.


The blatant OpenAI brand infringement in all the non-official apps is extremely frustrating.

It just further weakens Apple’s arguments for their locked down store and app review process.

How does anyone (outside HN perhaps) have any hope of finding the official one?

And what are we (Apple users) paying our “Apple tax” for when the app store quality control processes have sunk so low?


> And what are we (Apple users) paying our “Apple tax” for when the app store quality control processes have sunk so low?

Lack of competition. If Android counts as competition then switch to Android.


> How does anyone (outside HN perhaps) have any hope of finding the official one?

Easy. Out of all the ChatGPT wrapper clones on the App Store, Apple will promote OpenAI's app first, and remove the fakes if they wanted to. Only a selected few 'approved' competitor AI chatbot apps on the App Store will be still around.

This just shows that almost none of these AI chatbot apps have a moat and can be easily wiped out with a push of a red button, even if they are using the GPT-4 API.


There is a famous app for cars on Android called Torque. I accidentally told an average apple user to download it to head his OBD2 codes. 4 fake app downloads later he gave up and said "this is why I stick to apple apps" Lol what


If you just wait for Apple to copy their competition and give the apps away for free, you don't need to deal with the spammy app store!


Can’t argue with that. Given enough time, Apple solves everything!


Same. I'm sure it will show up on search in a day or do.


For people outside the US: use a second apple account with Region set to US.

I have used this many times for country specific public transport or delivery apps but same thing works here. You do not lose access to other apps, sync features or subscriptions.

Go into the App Store app, not your phone settings, click your profile and scroll all the way down to log out. Then log in with a US account, download the app and switch again.

You can continue using the US only apps after switching back


Or just open chat.openai.com in Safari and do a “Add to Homescreen”. Before the official app, I was using cgpt on my phone like that and it worked well.


You need to login each time if you use Safari in private browsing mode.


And if you use a 56kb modem you need to connect to the internet before using the website.

Somehow, I believe you put yourself in that situation and it's not generally applicable to most people who don't use private browsing mode as the default one.


No one forced you to use the private mode!


How can you create a US account? Don't they ask for a credit/debit card and/or phone number?


I bought a $20 US gift card on ebay and redeemed that into a new US account


Isn’t it enough to just switch the region to US, download the app, then switch back?


you have to cancel your subscriptions, use up all balance and can only do it once every X months


do updates work if i switch back to my original account?


Yes they work but you will be prompted to sign in with the account that bought the app by entering its password. Auto-updates sometimes work but only if you’ve entered the password for the account recently. Some work was done around iOS … 14 maybe? to try and improve this experience, but iOS is still not fully multi-account. And strange things sometimes happen to DRM content, in-app purchases and music libraries.


Good point. That doesn’t work, need to log in with the US account first. Or remain logged in.

Works fine for me though. I have barely any apps that need updating


"This app is not available in your country or region"

Seriously?

When is this idiotic corporate idea going to die? Internet has no regions.

(BTW, I pay for ChatGPT plus)


Unfortunately, the internet is getting more and more balkanized. What people see in one country is becoming completely different from what people see in another country, and often things are completely inaccessible between countries. Not to mention that even within countries it's becoming impossible to see the same things as someone else.


I thought this idiocy would end with the failure of DVD Regions (remember those?), a lesson would be learned and we would all move on.

But now I see this kind of crap from companies pretending to be at the forefront of technology and it has me not just frustrated, but worried.

Do people at OpenAI realize how much bad will this kind of segregation causes? Because make no mistake, this is segregation: you divide your users into "better" ones and "worse" ones.


Wow, TIL "balkanize" is a word. I love that!


The internet most definitely has 'regions' when it comes to laws and resulting potential liability.


Someone will grab and share the .ipa eventually (link appreciated). Gotta love shitty pointless bureaucracy.


Google’s Bard is not available in the EU, afaik.


They even made it unavailable in Europe full stop, except for the UK, where it was available from the start. Switzerland, Turkey, Norway etc. These countries don't even have GDPR, which is an EU law.


For all those curious about what is in the ChatGPT iOS app, this thread does a deep dive: https://twitter.com/emergetools/status/1659283367710322702


Funnily enough I've been in contact with the Apple Support Team complaining about the scam "GPT" apps. Their reply, verbatim:

"We take reports of fraudulent behavior very seriously. Please provide the following so we can investigate the situation:

Steps to reproduce the behavior: Screenshots of the behavior on the iTunes Store or App Store: Names and links to the Apps:

After we receive this information, our team will investigate your concern."

Am I supposed to provide unpaid work for a $2 trillion company?

Also, worth mentioning the "tracking" of the "official" app:

The following data may be collected and linked to your identity: Contact Info Identifiers Diagnostics User Content Usage Data

Thanks, but no thanks!

Disclosure: I developed an iOS app that uses the OpenAI API, but somehow managed to not include any tracking.

AKME is free and doesn't include any tracking. The app supports a BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) model, as well as buying in-app tokens https://apps.apple.com/app/akme-ai-knowledge/id6446436196


Are they scam apps, though? If they use any GPT model or API they're real apps.

Just because OpenAI didn't make an app first doesn't mean they're the only ones that can create apps for interfacing with GPT networks.


Here is a thorough analysis by Alex Kleber - https://privacyis1st.medium.com/the-dark-side-of-the-mac-app...

Yes, there are multiple scam apps


I read the article, basically there are multiple duplicate apps that do the same thing but with slightly different UI from the same developer. These apps implement UX that violates Apple’s design guidelines. Surprisingly, the reviews are not fake just users are often asked to review the app. I fail to see the scam portion of it? The app seems to deliver what it promised using the GPT API.


These apps do "a bit" more than violate Apple's design guidelines.

For example, one of the apps from the article claims to use 'GPT-4' and they actually do call the OpenAI API, but use the GPT-3.5 model.

Another app that also claims to use GPT-4, actually uses a different (self-hosted?) LLM.

In my opinion, this is a scam - a fraudulent attempt to make a quick profit.


Your app won't save my API key. It accepts it, shows a checkmark, then the pop up just sits there with the checkmark. If I click elsewhere besides the pop-up, it goes away, but prefs say key missing, and popping that window again doesn't show checkmark.


Thank you for bringing this to my attention! I haven't been able to reproduce it, but I'm investigating the issue. I wrote you an email and would really appreciate your help.


FYSA: I had gotten the email and replied.


Followup -- It's fixed now.


Thank you again for your email and for bringing this to my attention!

And really (really!) happy it's fixed, especially since I still don't know what might have caused it (I haven't made any changes and there's been no app update since v1.1).


“ the scam "GPT" apps.”

Define scam


I replied to a comment above: here is an analysis by Alex Kleber https://privacyis1st.medium.com/the-dark-side-of-the-mac-app...


I was excited to try this because I want to be able to use ChatGPT hands-free in certain circumstances. The ideal would be to put it into voice assistant mode, have it listen to me and then answer after a sufficient break in speech.

From what I can see, this app lags behind their web interface a bit, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had some approval trouble at Apple and will be rolling out updates more frequently now that the official app is out the door. As it stands, the voice transcription feature returns an API error and it doesn't seem to have any option to read the response to you with text to speech.

I'm hopeful to see what updates they roll out in the coming weeks


There are some great Siri shortcuts that work with the OpenAI API.

Edit: I am using this one https://github.com/Yue-Yang/ChatGPT-Siri


Do go on - I'd love something like this.


yes please, i feel like i am dreadfully underusing iOS Workflows and Siri, and need more inspiration to integrate it into my life


The people complaining that you can’t find it by searching verbatim: this is always the case for the first 1-2 days with an iOS app launch.


Why doesn't Apple fix this? It seems like no matter how their backend architecture works, they could surely find a way even just to manually whitelist new big name apps from well-known companies to the top of search results.

Why wouldn't they do that?

It's only bad for everyone that instead there's this total shitshow litany of garbage presented to the user instead. It's bad for customers, bad for the app suppliers, and bad for Apple themselves. Totally bizarre.


The problem also occurs when searching for any low-ranking results in the iOS store, regardless of getting the exact name correct. A friend released a crossword game, and when searching the exact name of the app, it still comes up as the seventh result behind one ad and five other (much more popular) crossword apps with different names.


but this is openai we are talking about, you'd think apple would fast track them towards ranking higher at least to not make apple look terrible


I really do think it's just that some index/ranking doesn't get updated for about 24-48 hours - it always seemed to me to be a system issue.

Plus, OpenAI has the link on their site, which will bolster the couple days initial release traffic.


Sadly, more and more, releases these days means U.S. only. Here in Germany, App store tells me, not available in your region or country.

That been said, Bing-App is pretty good so far, waiting to look at openAI one. Far too many fake ones masquerading as chatGPT apps and it is really painful to see my friends paying for some of these fake ones to remove adverts and trying to figure out how to make it do things.


What does this add over opening chat.openai.com in Safari? It seems like I could perhaps browse conversation history offline (but I can't tell for sure), and voice dictation. I've just used it in Safari with no problems, so I want to know if any compelling reasons exist to use the app.

I'd guess it includes additional tracking enabled by an app and other undesirable aspects of an app.


I had chat.openai.com saved to my homepage so here's my finding so far:

- snappier

- search through conversation history via title search

- whisper built in for record -> transcribe workflow (does not work "live" unfortunately)

- easier to scroll through history and delete history

- long press prompt or response to copy/select text or perform voting/regeneration actions

- better text resizing support (via the control center's Aa text resize option) (online resizing text made things way too cluttered)

Probably more but all I've found from about 10 minutes of playing around.

Definitely better UX from my perspective!


> whisper built in for record -> transcribe workflow

How is this any better that Apple's built in dictation?

> easier to ... delete history

This is actually the one advantage I see to this app. Deleting history on the desktop is a pain and requires far too many clicks. I can delete history more quickly with the iOS app.


Whisper is (highly) more accurate.


iOS dictation always knows exactly what I say and I get the immediate feedback of seeing the text written as I am speaking. With Whisper in the ChatGPT app I can't see anything I say, until after I finish speaking. So I'm really not seeing an advantage yet.


No tts tho. I’d rather have a conversation.


That'd be nice for sure.


If all it does is avoid making me re-authenticate several times a week that alone is worth the install for me.


It’s actually less functional than the web interface — plugins and web browsing features are unavailable.

But it does do a LOT of haptic.


Haptic should not be on by default for every token of output. About as annoying as the clack of a mechanical typewriter. Counting the minutes until OpenAI make it off by default, and you can turn it on in settings. Each sentence might be enough to know that it's still typing. Currently wastes a lot of energy, and as a reminder that ChatGPT is outputting it's way too distracting.


Turned off in 30 seconds, boy is that annoying..


Haptic can be turned off via settings


Better ui experience: snapper, could use many UI/background features from the sdk that isn’t available from the web app.


Now they can start to compete more directly with things like Siri and soon Google’s Assistant on somewhat more equal footing, though neither OS provides quite the hooks for third party apps to directly subvert them, though maybe this will change with some of the more extreme antitrust provisions in motion in the European Union.


> This official app is free (no ads!), syncs your history across devices, and brings you the newest model improvements from OpenAI.

It now looks like the short term ChatGPT copycat grifter apps on the App Store are now going to start packing their bags now. If they don't, Apple will do it for them.

Expect this one to take over the app store and remain the top 10 apps for a very long time.


Wow, just tried to search organically and there are an awful lot of existing apps already spun up to give you access to ChatGPT. I wonder if Apple will help them be prioritized in the rankings or if they'll be pushed into spending ad dollars to appear at the top of the search.


It's been out for less than 24 hours so I don't think Apple's App Store search index has had time to update the rankings. Give it a few days and I'll bet it becomes the number 1 result.


Works really well. I'm happy to have an official app. I've never been entirely comfortable with passing my chats through a third party, I prefer to keep the number of people eavesdropping on me to a minimum.

Here's to hoping it doesn't log you out constantly like the web app.


now that's what I call haptic feedback


Yes!!!! What a nice touch from the devs.


Seems a bit unnecessary


"App Not Available The app is currently not available in your country or region"

FFS, I'm a ChatGPT Plus subscriber, but I can't get the app. Why would they even restrict this?


GPT-4 works great, super impressive, but I am significantly less impressed by OpenAI as a business. I'm still locked out of creating a work account because I used up the two accounts-per-phone number limit that they have hardcoded (with no way to free up one of those slots by deleting an account) and can't create a new account. Dozens of posts on their support forum about the same thing, basically impossible to get any kind of human support from them to resolve it.


Had the same experience. The solution is just to use a family member's phone number.

The phone number isn't ever used again and is just used to limit automated signups as far as I can tell.


I had the same issue; I did delete one of the accounts and -- still the same issue.


I have access to plugins, browsing, etc. through the website but not through the app. Hopefully they bring that over soon.


I misclicked a birthday year that’s too recent and no matter what, I’m no longer able to login with any method now. Sad.


My experience too. It had one of those idiotic calendars you have to scroll back painfully so I said F it ok today is my birthday. Then it locked me out and said they can't serve me. Tried to log in with another email and it still wouldn't let me. I uninstalled the app and thus my introduction to the world of AI on my phone was complete.


Only available in the US at the moment.


I wonder what’s the reasoning behind limiting availability of an app for a product that’s already widely available.


Legal, translation and limiting demand to a reasonable level with rolling release to other markets in future?

That said, I also find it somewhat unfair, as likely does anyone not in the US :)


Also seems not to have Browsing / Plugins, as far as i can figure out at least


"Not available in your country", as usual.


So this is why they changed the model dropdown to buttons, more touch friendly.


Also much better in every way


Tried this for few minutes, and it makes my phone run hot. Whats the CPU/GPu intensive work this app is doing on the device? I thought all the queries are sent to the server and no on device processing.


It's using whisper to do speech to text, which is a non-trivial amount of on device processing. At least that's why I think it's heating up my phone, because that was the first thing I wanted to try.


Yeah I think these new models are going to burn through your battery like dried leaves, even if you have the very latest phones. I ran a reduced Vicuna on my 14 Pro and it heated up very quickly.


I haven’t tried speech to text earlier. To me with or without speech to text, my device heats up


Same, I tried Whisper and received a call right after and it was unusually hot.


My experience:

- literally impossible to find on the App store, even when searched for by its exact name caps and all; only able to get it by navigating from OpenAI page

- weekend-project level UX

- no access to my Beta plugins or browsing

My conclusion:

This is a placeholder, not a product.


> literally impossible to find on the App store

If you can't find it by the title, that's an App Store issue, not a product issue.


In new chats yes, you can't use plugins, but you can create a new minimal chat on desktop with plugins, code interpreter, or browser and it seems to work fine when you open that convo in the app history.


Waiting the android one, will love it.

Btw is there anyway to export or do quick copy paste over long conversation? Seems like not possible to easily scroll and select the whole convo.


Not sure if it's in the app, but on their website, if you go to Settings -> Data Control, there's a button to export all your conversations.


Yep! There is an export button that allegedly will export all and send to your email.


I was a little upset I had to scroll through and endless series of "OpenAI" apps, but then I realized they locked the app to the US Appstore only. Pity


Couldn't find it searching the App Store, had to go onto safari, go to OpenAi's website and then click the link which re-directed me to the App Store


That’s typical for most new apps. It takes apple a day or two to index everything.


What a cesspool the AppStore is. It's awash in ChatGPT backend clients that are either subscription based and/or use dark patterns.


It's not available on the Paraguayan App Store yet. The same thing happened with ChatGPT itself, it wasn't available in Paraguay for a couple of months and no explanation as to why. I get that it's a free research preview and they don't have to, but it would be nice if I could get these things when most others do.

I can switch stores but would need to cancel subscriptions.


I think it's only in the US at the moment


>The ChatGPT app is free to use and syncs your history across devices

Chat history on the mobile app took a while to sync. In the time it synced, I asked ChatGPT is history is synced across devices. It said: (paraphrasing) "History is separate from the app and desktop, due to privacy considerations and the way the system was designed"

I see my history now after 5 minutes of waiting on the app


For future reference, any information ChatGPT has "about itself" (as you seem to have asked) would have to be hard-coded into its context. Usually, it's a safe bet that if you ask it questions like that - it's going to come up with some handwavey nonsense that sounds like the "privacy-preserving" approach. Or in short, ChatGPT doesn't have any clue about the details of the various frontends used to serve it.


- Couldn't find it searching the App Store.

- Go to OpenAi's website and then click the link which re-directed me to the App Store

- Not available in your country!


Gradual rollout.


"This app requires iOS 16.1 or later".


I really like how it has the open ai whisper speech-to-text model built in so you can use your voice to talk to the model.


US only. Great. Typical.


Why it's a problem? EU should offer ChatGDPR as an alternative.


ChatGDPR is funny tho.


ChatGDPR: Thank you for your question. However, as a GDPR compliant chat bot, I must inform you that tracking user data for targeted advertising purposes requires collecting personal information and may infringe upon user privacy rights. I cannot provide guidance on implementing such functionality without explicit user consent.


Not available in Germany. That’s a pity.


Thank you to the team there that worked on getting this out. I'm very excited to use it!


Unavailable in my region?

Seriously?


I spent an hour writing a small Signal bot, and I've had ChatGPT on my phone for ages. The experience is the best out of any client I've used, as it's just a chat. I prefer it over a full fledged app.


This is actually quite appealing to me. Do you mind if I ask what if any framework you used to do this?


I used signald, pysignald, and ChatGPT-bot:

https://pypi.org/project/chatgpt-bot/

I can probably publish the code somewhere, if you're interested.


Thank you so much for the reply!

Yes, no pressure, but if you feel like it, that would be great :)



Thank you!


Why not available in the UK?


Unavailable in Canada, too :/


Probably for regulatory reasons. They will eventually release it in all the app stores, but OpenAI has a lot of lawyers and they are very cautious.


Does it use Whisper for transcription?

(also transcription API call is bugged AF right now)


I wouldn't see why it wouldn't use Whisper. I just wish they could have gotten whisper.cpp working for live transcription on device.

But you can also turn on Voice Control and type with your voice without using Open AI - iOS dictation is getting better but not quite on par with Whisper by any stretch.


Is the GPT-4 access still limited to 25 messages every 3 hours for iOS?


While it doesn't specify on the app that the limit is 25 messages every 3 hours. It mentions that GPT-4 access is limited and usage caps are reset regularly, but doesn't specify how much.


So, does this run on iOS, or is it a wrapper of some privacy invading cloud thing?

It says it syncs between devices. Is it E2E sync, which is kind of table-stakes for the iOS ecosystem at this point?


What does E2E sync mean here? They already know what you wrote because you submitted it to them, similar to a Google search.


Oh, so it's still a cloud thing. Quaint. :-)

I wasn't sure, since people are complaining that it makes their phones hot, and it's only a matter of time before this stuff runs locally.

I guess that answers my question, though.


It's mostly odd that you called ChatGPT "some privacy invading cloud thing"


Can someone chime in if local runtimes are likely to come soon? Can 10B params or so contain all the compressed contents of the internet?


gpt only exists in the cloud. openai has not released the model weights publicly. llama is the closest thing that you can run yourself.


I wonder if they’ll release an iPad app too, I’d appreciate that.


Using "Add to Home Screen" for the chat.openai.com URL actually is better for now IMO.

It has more features like selecting GPT-4 sub-models with browsing, plugins, etc...

Kudos to the responsive CSS


> It has more features like selecting GPT-4 sub-models with browsing, plugins, etc...

Well yeah, if you have early access to those features. Most do not.


FYI they're now available for everyone. Just need to enable them in ChatGPT settings.


Is there an iOS SDK to leverage their APIs?

Seems like they'd need one to build this app so it would be nice for them to release it to the broader dev community.


The OpenAI APIs are pretty easily accessible over HTTP. Not sure what an iOS SDK would bring to the table.


Just this week, GPT-4 helped me:

* Find new artists to listen that combine techno with psytrance

* Navigate a tricky personal communication situation

* Debug a LOT of different issues

* Write new code in a language I'm not really familiar with

* Explore political ideas through simulated debate

* Search current visa requirements

* Find answers to some random history questions

* Calculate whether my tent would be blown of a mountain cliff or not

* Adjust a recipe to my taste, amount of servings and available ingridients

* Name some very abstract variables

* Remember a name of historical figure

Sure, I could do most of these just with Google, but it would take me a lot more time. Sometimes 2, sometimes 10 times more.

Can't wait when this app will be available in my region.


Mobile web works. I don't know if their signups block non-US phone numbers (they require a phone number for surveillance, er, security purposes).


Not really. When I close Safari, the answer generation stops.


> Name some very abstract variables

Curious what you mean by this?


Unfortunately, I can't answer this question without breaking my NDA


Didn’t you already break your NDA by having ChatGPT name your variables?


NDA didn't say no talking to LLMs


(Disclaimer, I’m using gpt 3.5 or whatever is publicly available.)

This week I used ChatGPT to help “diagnose” a medical issue my senior dog has developed with his eye. We noticed he very suddenly started walking into furniture, and his left eye has become sunken and half covered by his third eyelid. Our small town’s farm vet wasn’t equipped to deal with eye issues, and the second vet we saw was understaffed so they had a traveling vet in for the day look at our dog. We weren’t impressed after he couldn’t figure out how to work his eye examination tool (he was looking through it backwards at first, shining the light into his own eye) and then gave up and just prescribed an antibiotic/ointment to our dog and told us to come back in a week.

Obviously we’ve tried to google the symptoms, but I’d heard anecdotes of people feeding their own medical issues into ChatGPT and getting good feedback, so I figured I’d do the same with my dog. It gave me a ton of detailed data about five different things that could be causing the problem with his eye. I questioned it about each one, and it tried to rule out some of the causes to the best of its ability when I was able to fill in details about things it asked. All the while it cautioned me that a vet would need to test him to truly determine if one of these things were the problem.

We’re heading back to the vet tomorrow for his recheck, ready to ask about a couple of these things. I’ve been very bearish on ChatGPT and LLMs, but it’s been genuinely useful to me in this situation.

I’m still a little cautious about the info it gave me though, because I’m still thinking about all the times I’ve played with it and had it give me broken lua/f# code or kusto queries that call functions which simply don’t exist. This could easily be one of those situations where I’m not a veterinarian so I can’t easily spot any of the wrong or misinformed information it gave me.

Edit: the five conditions it listed that could have caused the sudden eye problem for my dog are entropion; ectropion; enophthalmos; glaucoma; trauma.


Same. I described my dizziness and pointed me to BPPV and 4 others that were quickly filtered out. I also asked how to further diagnose the issue and pointed me to some maneuvers. I then searched them on YouTube and I was fine 3 days later (this stuff can stick around for months)

Diagnosis is probably going to be one of the most impactful uses. Even if then you have to head to an actual doctor to confirm, it's good to have a possible lead.

We've been using Google for the same purpose for a decade but with much worse results, this is a step up.


I've tried GPT-3 and GPT-3.5 since it's release. GPT-4 is such a fantastic improvement in terms of getting the facts right that I can't remember when was the last time it had misremembered things.

And just a couple of days ago they released the version with web search, and now I always ask it to search for information instead of trying to remember it, or at least to search to confirm that it remembers things right.

Sadly, search seems pretty unstable for now. But it's still a completely unique, once in a lifetime technology. I can't compare it to anything less than internet in terms of potential impact.


I'd be worried downloading it because there's so many fake spyware ChatGPT apps in the store.

But I have Android anyway.. Hopefully that will come too!


What does spyware mean in this context? Some phishing-like cover websites prompting users to input their credentials of openai? Apart from that, I thought Apple handled permission handling well?


I don't know exactly, I have not come across any myself.

But I heard it's a thing (probably read about it here): https://www.tomsguide.com/news/chatgpt-is-now-being-used-by-...


The top search results for "openai chatgpt" are all fakes/scamware. Be sure you use the official link from the linked page.


I've been using the Bing app for my mobile AI needs. It works on Android, has voice input and is allegedly powered by GPT4.


Thanks, I've been looking for an "official" GPT app for Android for ages!

Minor annoyances after trying it out for a few minutes: 1) The app requires you to sign up for conversations longer than 5 exchanges. 2) It disables my keyboard's word suggestions and instead forces its own – English – word suggestions upon me, making it very hard to write in e.g. Spanish. 3) Even typing in English is weirdly difficult – there is some lag and no autocorrection. 4) The text-to-speech and speech-to-text algorithm only supports English.

But hey, better than nothing.


Strange, I don't experience the issues you describe. I can type like in any other app, with keyboard suggestions, even in French.


Weird. Notably, I'm seeing similar (even worse) issues when I use the chat on Bing.com with Firefox (using User Agent Switcher): I can barely type – the JS always overrides ("corrects") my input.


Gonna be cool when I can take a photo with this and ask CGPT what's in the photo/translate/how to repair/etc.


Not available in several European markets...


Again, the notorious iOS-first... It's 2023 and releasing multi-platform fully-feature apps is easy!


Why did it take them so long to the point where there are a million wrapper apps out there anyway?


Says not available in my region (UK)?


Unfortunately no beta internet plug-in access in iOS app even when I have it through their website.


Seems noticeably faster text generation on iOS than on the web, not sure if I'm imagining it?


NOT loving the excessive vibrations on the phone. It increases my anxiety somehow... I'd remove it honestly or make it 10% of what it is in certain cases only.

I might be alone in this, but we've been trained for vibrations to mean something. Vibrating the phone on every line or response from ChatGPT seems excessive to me (and a battery drain as well!).


You can turn off the "Haptic Feedback" in the app's settings


Yes, and you should. I also have turned off vibrations for everything but phone calls, calendar events and reminders.

Everything else has “Sounds” as off which turns off vibrations as well.


Yeah this is highly excessive and irregular use of haptics. I expect they will turn that off by default within a week.

I turned off haptics immediately in settings, but most people will be complaining before they figure that out.

It is annoying enough the way that ChatGPT drips out results, but now it acts as a low-quality hand massager and battery drain too?

Not ideal, but the product is still very good and people will happily use it, regardless of these "extra features"


Yeah can't find app on appstore even by searching. All the top ones are not by OpenAI.


I recently read a news article that Sam Altman is attending the Bilderberg Meeting [0]. The timing is perfect.

[0] https://bilderbergmeetings.org/meetings/meeting-2023/partici...


Not available for my region. Sad.


Not available outside of US App Store? Not sure why they restrict by geography


Unfortunately they disabled ability to install it on Apple silicon macOS :(


Anyone know of a reason why this isn't available on the UK app store?


Why is this an app? What does it enable that the website can't?


Apps can open faster than a webpage, for one thing, which is convenient for a tool you're using all the time.

(I say this as someone who resisted making an app for AutoTempest for years based on the same logic, but finally caved to the fact that a lot of people just prefer them. Something I'm now coming to understand as I wait eagerly for a ChatGPT app...)


Lmao literally can’t login, crashes every which way i try


Didn't they bring it to iOS with https://chat.openai.com ?

Normalize people using the web. And FirefoxAndroid... don't refresh an idle tab unless I tell you to!


One problem I have with their website is that it constantly signs me out. It’s why I ended up downloading an app (GeePeeTee had the best privacy policy I could find) to use their service personally.


A valid complaint, though that isn't a lack of capability in the browser, it's a big of the site.

I think that happened to me a while back, but I haven't had a problem with it in weeks.


Don't get me wrong, I'm someone who prefers a browser over apps as well. I'll have to give their website a try again, maybe it's not an issue any longer.


The app appears to be region locked, at least from the UK.


I wonder how Microsoft and the Bing team feel about this.


Considering this is Microsoft's baby, I think they feel quite good about this getting to front of HN.


Is it prepared to handle markets like India and China?


Not available in my country sadly (the Netherlands).


Assume this won't work with custom API keys?


Digging the use of haptics across this app.


It's not available for outside US.


Not for iPad :(


Its privacy report card is not great.


It's not too bad. Notice how there's no section for "Data used to track you", only "Data linked to you"? They're not actively tracking users.


it seems to be not available in all countries yet. Can't find it in the German app store.


Not available in Taiwan... why?


Everyone want their 30% cut.


Wish this was available in Canada. Super pumped to have easier mobile access than the website.


Or use Poe, which also offers GPT-4 at the same price as a ChatGPT sub.


Poe offers a comparatively smaller quantity of GPT-4 responses in comparison to a subscription to OpenAI's ChatGPT. The limitations of Poe result in a maximum allowance of 1090 responses per month, calculated by combining 3 response per day each with an additional 1000 responses. Conversely, an OpenAI ChatGPT subscription provides approximately 2250 responses. This estimation assumes the utilization of 75 GPT-4 responses per day, divided into three separate sessions of 25 responses each. It is possible to attain additional responses by initiating inquiries beyond the nine-hour window in the prior calculation.

Poe necessitates a yearly commitment. As a consequence, if the costs of GPT-4 decrease significantly or a more advanced model becomes available, there is a potential risk of paying for Poe and not using it. Poe does offer access to Claude base model and limited access to the more advanced Claude models.


Poe offers fewer GPT4 messages than OpenAI for the same price. Just wanted to add that context.


This app appears to be region locked. Not available in Canada.


Bye bye Google.


More like bye bye ChatGPT knock-offs.


US only :/


They are rolling out software at breathtaking pace!


Wonder what permissions it wants


So far just microphone access if you want to use voice to search.


None so far! It hasn't even asked for my clipboard access.


None


App not available in India yet.


Sigh. Another iOS only launch.


Not available in Italy lol


That's already been reverted. https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-is-available-agai...

Edit: Oh ok you mean the app, I thought you meant ChatGPT in general because Italy banned it for a bit.

I think it will come soon, when I had an app in the store and I added a country it also didn't appear straight away.


> P.S. Android users, you're next! ChatGPT will be coming to your devices soon.

I'm getting a good chuckle out of this.

The thought-leaders have been warning us that large language models will put 99% of professionals out of work and will threaten the nature of human existence... and yet today's leading LLM apparently can't be used to generate code for a boilerplate user interface using the Android SDK.


This made me wonder, are there any public examples of codebases written entirely (or almost entirely, with human curated parts noted) by GPT-4?


Yeah, I made CalendarMapApp in just a few hours having ChatGPT write all the code for me. https://github.com/localjo/CalendarMapApp


> Approximately 95% of the code was generated by ChatGPT using the GPT-4 model.

Apparently not all of the code.


Me, using a perfectly functional autogenerated PWA: sensible chuckle


Or Flutter?

Ironically, ChatGPT is very good at that.


Ridiculous take on multiple fronts, man.

-> The thing was released like two months ago, think what LLMs will do in like 10 years.

-> They likely want an industrial scale indestructible app for their multi-million $ product, they can take at least three months to build it.


Considering they have hundreds of employees who are literally experts in using GPT-4, including evaluating it's code output, I think it's fair to expect they could produce an 'industrial scale indestructible' android app simultaneously with the iOS app.

Especially considering GPT-4 was, allegedly, complete by August 2022. If it doesn't even enable 2x or 3x the output after a half year of familiarization then I think it's a lot harder to use for businesses then commonly suggested.


How do you know it hasn't 3x their output? For all we know this app was written by one guy while he was waiting for his code to compile.


Because then management would be very short sighted to not assign 2 more guys waiting for their code to compile to complete the android app simultaneously.


They have a finite number of employees, and it's possible that making apps is very far down on their list of priorities.

OpenAI are supposed to be saving the world after all


Yes finite, but far more then sufficient to find a few folks.


I feel the same disappointment for being put to wait, in my case I am not in US. Probably will forget to install the app later.


Why is it US-only anyways?


You are pitting your dreams of 10 year in the future against the reality of now. Of course your dreams are winning!

Ridiculous would be for me to take your dreams for granted, and ignore the evident reality that is right in front of me.


Yes, because the (((thought-leaders))) have been saying that OpenAI will let GPT to write all of their software from now on. And if they won't then that means LLMs are incapable. /s

Also, there are reasons to not launch on both platforms at once even if the binaries were ready. E.g. if you want to space out onboarding new users. They are launching only in the US afterall.


I don't know what you meant by (((that bit))) but assuming you're aware what sort of trope it is: we ban accounts that play those games. Please don't post flamebait to HN.


By that bit I mean to object against a label "thought leaders". I don't know who they are supposed to be, but sounds to me about as ridiculous as complaining about "illuminati". Apparently I didn't chose the right way to denote it and shouldn't have reacted to that at all.

To me actually the parent comment seems like bait - boiling down to "GPT is incapable, otherwise OpenAI would use it to generate the Android app along with the iOS app".

Apologies, I should have written my comment in a better way.


Ok! I was referring to something totally different - there was a period a couple of years ago when triple parens were used as an anti-semitic trope on the internet. I'm glad I was careful to put the word "assuming" in my GP comment because scolding people for something they didn't actually do really sucks.

Still, other readers would make the same assumption so it's best to avoid that notation in HN comments in the future.


Don't Panic


UAE: This app is currently not available in your country or region.


Same for EU?


"This app requires iOS 16.1 or later"

Pure laziness.


A brand-new project in Xcode doesn't require iOS 16. You actually have to make use of OS features only available in 16+ to get your app limited like this. And beside, 5-year old iPhones support iOS 16; it's not too unreasonable to make use of these features.


Huh?




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