ChatGPT’s new group chats let your friends, family, and AI plan together 🤖💬

OpenAI has officially rolled out group chats in ChatGPT, letting up to 20 people chat together while bringing AI into the conversation. The pitch is straightforward: turn ChatGPT into a collaborative space for planning, debating, and creating together without leaving the app.

How it actually works 🧩

To start a group chat, just click the « people » icon at the top right of any new or existing conversation, then generate an invitation link to share. Adding someone to an existing chat actually creates a dedicated copy for the group, which keeps your original solo conversation history intact.

© ChatGPT

Each participant needs to create a profile (name, username, avatar) to be clearly identifiable in the thread. From there, everyone exchanges messages in a single timeline, with ChatGPT chiming in periodically without dominating the discussion.

Up to 20 people… and one AI 👥

OpenAI caps groups at 20 participants, which should work for a project team, family, or small creative collective. Within this framework, ChatGPT plays the role of « shared assistant »—a single AI available to everyone at the heart of the same thread.

Interesting detail on the model side: group responses run on GPT-5.1 Auto, which automatically selects the best variant based on context and the user’s plan. Rate limits only apply to ChatGPT’s responses, not messages between humans, so you can debate and refine prompts without burning through your quota.

Real-world uses, from weekend trips to board meetings 🗺️

OpenAI highlights some very everyday scenarios: organizing a weekend with friends, planning a dinner, or preparing a group trip while ChatGPT compares options, builds to-do lists, or summarizes ideas. In a professional context, you can co-write a document, challenge a strategy, merge meeting notes, and have the AI synthesize decisions.

For creators and small teams, group chats can serve as a « war room »: brainstorming, selecting angles, generating article outlines or scripts, while ChatGPT structures, reformulates, and fact-checks information. The tool becomes a hybrid space between a WhatsApp group, shared Notion workspace, and real-time AI assistant.

An AI that learns to read the room 🧠

OpenAI had to teach ChatGPT specific social behavior for groups: the AI needs to understand when to speak and when to stay quiet. It’s supposed to only jump in when it makes sense or when explicitly called upon (« ChatGPT, can you summarize this for us? »), to avoid constant spam.

This ability to « read the room » opens the door to normalizing AI presence in our private conversations: the assistant becomes a group member, but one that’s always listening. It’s powerful for productivity… and inevitably sensitive for privacy.

Privacy safeguards in place 🔐

Key point: your group chats are logically separated from your individual conversations with ChatGPT. OpenAI assures that ChatGPT’s personal memory isn’t used in groups and that no new « memories » are created from these collective discussions.

Groups work on an invitation-only basis, and content isn’t public, though each member can see the entire shared history. Specific protections are in place for users under 18, with automatic reduction of sensitive content and parental controls that can disable group chats entirely.

Interface and settings: what you can control ⚙️

From the group settings panel, you can add or remove people, mute notifications, rename the group, or adjust the instructions given to ChatGPT (tone, role, level of intervention). All the usual tools remain available: web search, file uploads, image generation, etc., all shared with the group.

In practice, this lets you, for example: set ChatGPT to « project coach mode » in a work group, « travel guide » in a vacation group, or « fact-checker » in a friend group that loves to debate. The AI becomes a configurable role at the heart of the conversation, no longer just a neutral bot you ask isolated questions.

The catch: limitations and gray areas 🧱

Behind the appealing announcement, there are some downsides. First, the 20-participant limit can quickly become restrictive for larger organizations or very active communities. Second, the interface remains linear: no real discussion threads like Slack or Discord, which can make reading confusing in a very chatty group.

On the rollout side, the feature is now available to all logged-in users on Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans. And even though OpenAI emphasizes the separation between personal memory and groups, the question of conversation data collection remains at the center of criticism.

Another step toward augmented messaging 💬

With group chats, ChatGPT stops being just an individual tool to become a true « trusted third party » (or agent of discord) integrated into group exchanges. Long-term, this logic could transform how we debate, make decisions, and document our discussions, whether with family, friends, or at work.

The real question then becomes: are we ready to let an AI settle permanently in the middle of our private groups, with everything that implies for social dynamics, creativity… and confidentiality?

Would you invite ChatGPT into your group discussions, or would you rather keep your human conversations « pure » on WhatsApp, Telegram & co? Tell us how you imagine using (or not using) these group chats: organization, work, debates… or no interest for you? Looking forward to reading your scenarios and reservations in the comments.