OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT generative AI chatbot, has launched the ChatGPT Android app in the United States (US), India, Bangladesh, and Brazil. It said that it plans to roll it out to additional countries over the next week but didn’t say which ones.
The announcement by the company seems accurate as Neowin has tried to download the app in the United Kingdom (UK) and it is still only letting us register an interest, but no actual download is available yet.
ChatGPT for Android is now available for download in the US, India, Bangladesh, and Brazil! We plan to expand the rollout to additional countries over the next week. https://t.co/NfBDYZR5GI
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) July 25, 2023
It’s not clear why the company is rolling out ChatGPT for Android in a staggered approach like this. It could be to prevent a flood of traffic from people coming to check out the new app or it could just be going for a cautious rollout so that it can fix any bugs discovered in the real world.
ChatGPT is already available as an app on iOS and OpenAI did a staggered rollout with that launch too, starting in the US and expanding over the next several weeks. We could see a similar timeframe for the launch on Android.
The main benefit of using the ChatGPT app over the web interface is that it will be a native experience. This could make it a bit faster and fit in with Android’s design language.
Other than that, users will still be stuck using GPT-3.5 or GPT-4 depending on whether they’re a subscriber or not, and all the other limitations, such as the 2021 cut-off, will still be present.
Interestingly, this is not the first native Android app that gives you access to GPT-3.5. The question-and-answer company, Quora, also has a service called Poe which allows you to interact with a bunch of different chatbots, including GPT-3.5 Turbo.
If you’re desperate to use ChatGPT on your phone outside of the four launch countries, then downloading Poe may be a good stopgap while you wait.