Now You Don't Have to Sign Up to Use ChatGPT

Been a little worried about providing your personal information to create an account so you can chat with ChatGPT? No worries, OpenAI is taking that barrier to use away.

In a blog post today, OpenAI announced that it’s making ChatGPT free to use to everyone, without the need to sign up for an account. The company said it wants ‘to make AI accessible to anyone curious about its capabilities.” That doesn’t apply to other types of paid OpenAI accounts (premium ChatGPT account, Dall-E, etc.).

It also doesn’t mean that OpenAI isn’t getting something from this deal. “We may use what you provide to ChatGPT to improve our models for everyone,” the companies said in the blog post. However, it also pointed out that you can turn off the option to “Improve the model for everyone” in the Settings section of ChatGPT. And you have that ability whether you sign up for an account or not.

Still, if you opt out of sharing your chats, you have to wonder what OpenAI gets in return for opening its service up to users. “Everything you do generates data,” according to a blog post from the Routledge, Taylor, & Francis group. So, even if you opt not to share your ChatGPT conversation with OpenAI, they may glean data from you in some way.

Still, if you’re curious about ChatGPT, this might be a good way to try it while giving away the least possible amount of data. OpenAI says availability is rolling out “gradually,” if you decide to go that route.