OpenAI is releasing a ChatGPT app for Mac

OpenAI is debuting its own app for ChatGPT generative text for macOS users, and it will be released very shortly after the release event is over.

To date, ChatGPT has been available for Mac through third party apps. That is about to change.

In its series of Monday announcements, the company declared that it will release a first-party Mac app on Monday. This will make the service constantly available to macOS users.

A ChatGPT-generated bar graph displaying major Roman Empire building projects by several emperors on a computer screen.

Example of ChatGPT's interface for Mac

The app includes a "Voice Mode" that utilizes the new GPT-4o model's audio features when they are fully deployed.

Paid subscribers can get the macOS app on May 13. It will eventually come to free GPT users in the next few weeks. A Windows version has been promised to arrive at some point in 2024.

The release doesn't appear to be related to a reported deal that is developing between Apple and OpenAI. A report on Friday claimed that a deal between the pair is close — but not yet finished.

Beyond that deal, there has also been considerable discussion about a deal with Google. And, Apple is said to be working on Ajax, an LLM that can cover many different functions that Siri can theoretically perform.

With Ajax, Apple is expected to offer text summarization analyzing whether contacts are involved, and providing more intelligent results to Spotlight.

Beyond generative AI, Apple is also working on summaritive applications. We broke news of a similar technology that is expected to be included system-wide to assist in summarizing voice notes, and other audio sources. This too is expected to be on-device.

Updated May 13 1:43 PM ET - updated with release timing, and the lack of a Windows version.

25 Comments

mpantone 2240 comments · 18 Years

About 6 months ago

mikethemartian said:

What will you be able to do with the app that you can’t in a browser window?

After reading the posts by OpenAI (linked in the article above) it appears the new desktop app will have wider awareness of things happening on your computer, beyond the confines of a web browser. The example provided by OpenAI showed ChatGPT writing a document. We'll see in the upcoming days if that's the tip of the iceberg.

Presumably this could expand to tasks such as photo, audio, and video editing, composing e-mails, maybe sending text messages. I wouldn't expect version 1.0 to the last version. It would seem like more functionality is on the way.

However the usage cases and tasks that ChatGPT 3.5 currently handle will expand. I expect deeper integration when iOS 18 and macOS 15 release this fall.

It would be an error to expect that whatever people are doing with ChatGPT right now will be the only things they will ever do with AI. This is still very much in its infancy and it is moving incredibly fast primarily for enterprise usage cases but this will trickle very quickly to consumer usage.

I expect much more with WWDC next month. Undoubtedly Apple will have APIs for much of this for developers to use whether it be harnessing OpenAI's technologies or Apple's in-house AI technologies.

Remember when Apple puts something like a Neural Engine core on a semiconductor it's really about 70% software and 30% hardware. The software is coming. You can't change the hardware on an Apple device but year after year we've seen iOS/macOS/iPadOS, etc. add new functionality to existing devices.

Moreoever much of what Chat-GPT's functionality comes from cloud-based AI servers doing the heavy lifting. That means there can be new functions and usages without upgrading the client device. I don't if you've used any cloud services but GeForce NOW is an example: Nvidia periodically upgrades the hardware in their datacenters to improve graphics capabilities.

Just like the Internet it would be foolish to expect AI technology to be fully developed and instantly deployed over the course of a few weeks. Like Rome the Internet wasn't built in a day.

I look forward to trying ChatGPT on my Mac, hopefully it will run on slightly older versions of macOS. I'm running nine months behind and I'll install Sonoma next month. However when I start, I'll create a new non-admin user account (a local account not registered with iCloud/AppleID) and run ChatGPT from there. There is no chance in hell I'd run ChatGPT on my real personal account in the beginning. We already know OpenAI trains its AI models using content that it does not ask permission from the copyright holders.

Serqetry 8 comments · 1 Year

About 6 months ago

Still can't download it...

It's not in the App Store. But if it was, you'd never be able to find it.
Go ahead and search for "chatgpt" in the App Store. Lol.

The walled garden is full of weeds.

ad0niram 2 comments · 6 Years

About 6 months ago

Weird because open ai is part owned by Microsoft. You’d think Mac would come later.

alandail 768 comments · 20 Years

About 6 months ago

ad0niram said:

Weird because open ai is part owned by Microsoft. You’d think Mac would come later.

It’s likely doing the voice to text on device to reduce latency, so need the neural net processing in Apple’s chips. It only works on the M series Mac’s.