WhatsApp
ChatGPT’s image-generating feature is now available through WhatsApp, OpenAI announced in an X post on Monday.
OpenAI first integrated its chatbot with WhatsApp in December, calling the feature 1-800-ChatGPT. WhatsApp users could dial that number (which translates to 1-800-242-8478) to interact with ChatGPT directly from the social messaging platform. Users in the US and Canada can also dial the number from their devices to speak directly with ChatGPT through its Advanced Voice Mode.
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Now, WhatsApp users can also request images by texting that same number.
How to access
To get started, you’ll need to save 1-800-ChatGPT into your WhatsApp contact list. The number should be automatically recognized by the app as belonging to OpenAI.
You can start the conversation with ChatGPT by sending a simple greeting. It will respond with a disclaimer, alerting you that you’re interacting with an AI chatbot, that by continuing with the conversation, you agree to OpenAI’s terms and conditions, and that your messages “may be reviewed for safety.”
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
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From there, you can request a simple text prompt describing the image you’d like to receive, such as: “Can you please generate an image of Saruman the Wise in a hot dog eating competition?” It may take several seconds, but the system will directly message you its output. All images are generated by the latest iteration of OpenAI’s text-to-image model, GPT-4o, which can create hyper-realistic images.
If you’re wondering, the image resulting from the above prompt was impressively rendered, complete with legible text and only one extra finger, which was depicted as a hot dog bun attached to the wizard’s wrist, as seen below.
Webb Wright/ZDNET via ChatGPT
AI anything everywhere all the time
Making ChatGPT accessible via phone calls and WhatsApp messages is part of OpenAI’s broader effort to integrate its technology across as many services as possible, thereby enabling it to reach more people — and harvest more training data for future AI models. The company famously partnered with Apple last year to bring ChatGPT to iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS.
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OpenAI’s competitors have also been working hard to expand the reach of their own AI products. Unlike OpenAI, many of these other companies are decades-old veterans in the tech industry, with their own fleet of proprietary services that can be readily linked with new, automated tools.
Adobe, for example, has been embedding its family of Firefly generative AI models across its product portfolio, while Google has been doing the same with Gemini, its flagship AI chatbot.
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