American artificial intelligence (AI) firm, OpenAI, has announced that starting next Monday, it will grant users unrestricted entry to its ChatGPT generative AI chatbot, eliminating the need for users to sign up for the service.
This decision is backed by tech giant, Microsoft, which has been supporting OpenAI up financially for some time now.
ChatGPT has proven to be a GenAI revolution since it released in late 2022, and boasts the ability to simulate human conversation. It can also undertake a myriad of tasks, from summarising lengthy texts, to crafting poetry and brainstorming ideas for themed parties. Despite experiencing a slowdown in growth since its peak in May 2023, with 1.8 billion web visits recorded according to Similarweb, ChatGPT remains a popular service with an expansive user base.
Reuters reports that to ensure responsible usage following its new decision, OpenAI has implemented additional content safeguards for users accessing ChatGPT without sign-ups, including blocking prompts and generations across various categories, although the specific categories were not disclosed.
Beyond the free version of ChatGPT, which doesn’t have direct internet access, OpenAI offers paid versions tailored for individuals, teams, and enterprises. The company clarified that while it may utilise user-generated content to enhance its large-language models, users retain the option to disable this feature.
