I Called 1-800-ChatGPT and Talked to the AI Chatbot. It Might Be the Smartest Idea I’ve Seen Yet

This morning, I spent 15 minutes on the phone with ChatGPT. You probably know by now that OpenAI released the ability to dial 1-800-ChatGPT to interact with the chatbot via voice call. And, so, for your sake, after my kids left for school, I sat down and made a phone call. It’s a weird thing to consider, partially because—as a general rule—I try as hard as I can never to talk to anyone on the phone other than my wife or kids. Beyond that, I’d almost always rather communicate by text, or email, or Slack, or anything that doesn’t involve a synchronous voice conversation. Also, I’m not sure the last time I dialed a 1-800 number that wasn’t to call an airline. I’d pretty much assumed they’d all been taken. Though considering the amount of money OpenAI paid to buy the chat.com vanity url, I imagine this was a bit easier. I came prepared with a list of questions to see how the experience is different from all of the other ways you can interact with ChatGPT. On the one hand, it’s a lot less useful than visiting chat.com or using one of the various apps. It’s more of a novelty or party trick that you might pull out because, hey, why not make a phone call to a chatbot just for fun? On the other hand, it works exactly like ChatGPT, except more friendly and more polished than voice mode in the app. I used the iOS 18 feature that lets you record phone calls, and when my iPhone gave the “this call is being recorded” alert, ChatGPT responded, “Great, let’s talk!” Then, I asked what seemed like an obvious question for mid-December: “What are some common things that kids do to try to have a snow day?” “Kids have some classic snow day rituals,” ChatGPT replied. “They might wear their pajamas inside out, flush ice cubes down the toilet, or even sleep with a spoon under their pillow, all in the hopes of a snow day miracle.“ Which, to be fair, is exactly the correct answer. If you had asked any of our four children, they would have given you that answer almost word for word. Of course, you could get the same information via any of the other ways you can interact with ChatGPT, so why a 1-800 phone number? Apparently, a lot of people think it’s a great idea. While OpenAI wouldn’t give specifics, CEO Sam Altman tweeted that “Wow people really love 1-800-CHATGPT lol.” It’s hard to measure the success of a product or feature on the basis of a vague tweet from a CEO, but it’s not surprising to me at all that a lot of top people would want to try this out. Again, even if for no other reason than party trick. I think it’s pretty clear that I am not the audience for this. I have a ChatGPT Plus account, and I regularly use ChatGPT on my iPhone and Mac. I even changed my default search engine in Brave to the ChatGPT extension. I’m not likely to make a phone call to talk to a robot unless it’s just for fun. In fact, I’ve written before that my least favorite thing in the world is when companies force you to have a conversation with a customer service bot instead of just letting you talk to a real human. That’s not fun. Fun, it turns out, is a pretty important part of this—and we’ll come back to it in a minute. One thing, however, did surprise me: ChatGPT is very good at understanding voice prompts. Much better than other voice assistants, at least in my experience with the phone version. Which, honestly, is kind of brilliant actually. It does not seem far-fetched that, over the next few weeks, as people get together for the holidays, someone will have a conversation or ask a question, and someone else will say, “Hey, I know how we can get the answer to that.” How fun will it be at that moment to just dial 1-800-ChatGPT? If you do, you’ll be demoing ChatGPT to a bunch of people who have probably heard of the chatbot but have never used it in any meaningful way. This is why this is so brilliant. It’s fun, and it reduces the friction involved with downloading an app or navigating to a website and creating an account. In that sense, it’s exposing an entirely new audience to ChatGPT, in a fun and accessible way. That’s one of the smartest ideas I’ve seen yet. EXPERT OPINION BY JASON ATEN, TECH COLUMNIST @JASONATEN