Anyone can now download the ChatGPT app on the Mac and use it, including non-paying users – previously the app was restricted to ChatGPT Plus subscribers.
OpenAI announced in a post on X that you can now “get faster access to ChatGPT to chat about email, screenshots and anything on your screen with the Option + Space shortcut.” You can download the app via the official website, enabling more convenient access to the AI, and putting various features at your fingertips on the desktop.
From a central prompt box you can query ChatGPT, and access options to take a screenshot or upload a file to send to the chatbot, and engage with the AI in other ways, including easily searching through your old conversations to find something specific.
The ChatGPT desktop app for macOS is now available for all users.Get faster access to ChatGPT to chat about email, screenshots, and anything on your screen with the Option + Space shortcut: https://t.co/2rEx3PmMqg pic.twitter.com/x9sT8AnjDmJune 25, 2024
Another example shows someone using the shortcut to upload some PDF class schedule files, asking ChatGPT to find and summarize the deadlines within the three files. That effectively illustrates how this can be a helpful tool to sort through your overwhelming college or school workload.
The most impressive aspect of the app is the way it streamlines the process of using ChatGPT. Instead of having to copy an entire document to paste into ChatGPT, you can simply select a section (or as noted above, upload the whole file), bring up ChatGPT, and just ask for feedback in the search bar.
Alongside all of this, Mac users can speak to the desktop ChatGPT app for a more hands-free experience, a feature I believe truly shifts ChatGPT from being just any old chatbot and turns it into a virtual assistant in macOS.
An example query on the OpenAI website shows someone prompting ChatGPT to take a screenshot of some broken code, requesting help with that code, which then opens the app and provides suggestions as to what to do to fix the problem.
All that said, I’m someone who's very skeptical about the increasing integration and use of artificial intelligence in this way, especially considering the environmental impact that AI can have (in terms of processing workloads, and the power needed for that).
So while I do appreciate that this is all incredibly cool, and will make the lives of many people easier and more productive, at the same time, the more widely available this kind of tech becomes, the more impact it will have on the environment – and that's something the big AI brands need to be thinking about.
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