ChatGPT is now available for Apple users in India and 32 other countries, a week after its launch in the US. A version for Android users is “coming soon,” its creator, OpenAI, has said.
The other countries where the AI-powered mobile phone app is now available on iOS are Algeria, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Estonia, Ghana, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Nauru, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Qatar, Slovenia, Tunisia, and the UAE, OpenAI said in a tweet yesterday (May 25).
After the US, European nations like France, Germany, and Ireland were also able to download it earlier this week.
In the past six days alone, ChatGPT has been downloaded more than 500,000 times, according to app intelligence firm data.ai, bagging a place among the highest-performing apps of 2022 and 2023.
The case of regulation of generative AI apps
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been visiting several countries to understand regulatory policies and address concerns about artificial intelligence (AI). He is scheduled to visit India next month.
It might be a tough road for Altman, though, as the government here is laying out its own regulations for AI. The new rules would bring ChatGPT under the purview of the Digital India bill, union minister Rajiv Chandrasekhar has said.
“Sam Altman is obviously a smart man. He has his own ideas about how AI should be regulated,” Chandrasekhar told MoneyControl. “We certainly think we have some smart brains in India as well and we have our own views on how AI should have guardrails.”
Pressing concerns over data security have prompted Altman to consider leaving the European Union. In March, Italy temporarily banned ChatGPT, citing the unlawful collection of personal data.
“There appears to be no legal basis underpinning the massive collection and processing of personal data in order to ‘train’ the algorithms on which the platform relies,” Italy’s data protection authority wrote.