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.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.