OpenAI is piloting group conversations in ChatGPT (www.engadget.com)

OpenAI has begun piloting group conversations in ChatGPT in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan, letting 1–20 people create chat rooms that include ChatGPT as a participant. Users can start a group from any conversation, add people or share a link, and participants must set up a profile. Practical uses include trip planning, collaborative report outlining, home renovation brainstorming and group dining suggestions; the bot stays quiet unless summoned with “ChatGPT.” Admin controls allow muting and removing participants (only the group creator can’t be removed), and any chat with a person under 18 triggers automatic limiting of sensitive content. Note: anyone with the invite link can add others, raising sharing and privacy considerations. Technically, group replies are powered by GPT‑5.1 Auto, which dynamically selects which underlying model to use based on the prompt. OpenAI says it trained the system to follow the temporal and social flow of multi‑participant conversations—deciding when to interject or remain silent—while iterating on behavior from early feedback. Implications for the AI/ML community include new challenges in multi‑user context tracking, safety and content moderation in shared spaces, routing models for latency/cost tradeoffs, and potential for richer collaborative workflows if the system reliably synthesizes inputs from multiple contributors.