On the 10th of its “12 Days of OpenAI” media event, the company announced that it has set up an 800 number (1-800-ChatGPT, of course) where anyone in the U.S. with a phone line can dial in and speak with the AI via Advanced Voice Mode. Because why not. “[The goal of] OpenAI is to make artificial general intelligence beneficial to all of humanity, and part of that is making it as accessible as possible to as many people as we can,” the company’s chief product officer, Kevin Weil, said during the Wednesday live stream. “Today, we’re taking the next step and bringing ChatGPT to your telephone.” In a live demo, the developer team called up the chatbot to ask about an architectural marvel located along the 280 freeway in Hillsborough, California. The AI, to its credit, accurately identified the structure as the famed “Flintstones House” and answered the team’s follow-up questions about it. The feature is currently available to U.S. users. You won’t need an OpenAI account to use the phone access, though you will be limited to 15 minutes of chatting. The functionality is nearly identical to using AVM on your mobile device. You can ask the AI for information, have it translate speech, or tell you a joke, among myriad other potential tasks. OpenAI has been steadily spreading the reach of its chatbot. Originally only available through the ChatGPT website, the AI is now available as a desktop app for both Apple and Windows, as well as on iOS and Android mobile devices. There’s no word yet on when the AI will be made available through Morse code or semaphore. With the 12 Days event nearly finished, OpenAI has released a litany of new models, products, and features. We’ve seen the release of the o1 reasoning model, the Sora video generator, and Projects for ChatGPT, updates to the Canvas feature, a new $200/month Pro subscription tier, and a host of new tools for developers. Over the past few months, numerous cases have emerged where interactions with AI chatbots have gone haywire, culminating in lost lives, medical trauma, and incidents of psychosis. Experts suggest young users could be particularly vulnerable, especially when they’re going through emotional turmoil. ChatGPT-maker OpenAI says it will soon warn parents about such behavior. What’s changing? The domain of AI has quickly gone from seeking answers from a chatbot to getting multi-step web-based work done for you, like booking restaurant tables, adding stuff to your Amazon cart, and performing deep back-and-forth research. But it looks like the answers you get, especially when it comes to online shopping, depend on the AI chatbot you are using. “Platforms disagree on brand recommendations for 61.9% of queries,” says an analysis conducted by BrightEdge. The company assessed tens of thousands of shopping-related questions that were provided to ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, and Google’s AI Mode in Search. Social media began as a tool for staying connected with the people you love. Over time, its harms were exposed, leading to these platforms building parental control tools. It seems a similar movement for AI chatbots, starting with the one that started it all — ChatGPT. OpenAI has announced that it is exploring parental guardrails while using ChatGPT. “We will also soon introduce parental controls that give parents options to gain more insight into, and shape, how their teens use ChatGPT,” the company said in a blog post.