Apple is bringing AI Chat to more places in your MacBook

A man in a suit using a laptop with a projected display showing a mockup of the ChatGPT interface.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Apple’s MacGPT app, a native app for macOS that brings quick access to ChatGPT from the menu bar, has been updated to version 3.0. The new update adds on plenty of new features, as well as making it more accessible for users.

For instance, a new feature called Global lets you access MacGPT’s assistance from anywhere by using a text field that appears in the middle of the screen. Another feature is Inline, which brings ChatGPT AI into the text field by typing in a trigger phrase and prompt.

And because MacGPT loads the chat interface directly into the web browser, you’re able to log into OpenAI and then begin a conversation with the app by clicking the menu icon or you can assign a keyboard shortcut instead.

And not only will MacGPT feature its own updates, but ChatGPT-4 integration also brings with it plenty of other improvements like using images to search, being a virtual assistant for the visually impaired, and boosting your conversational skills in Duolingo.

ChatGPT has plenty of potential for good

Despite many of the moral issues that ChatGPT brings with it, there are so many accessibility uses that can make life easier for people, as well as for general quality-of-life uses. As mentioned before, the visually impaired or blind can use an app called Be My Eyes, which lets GPT-4 pick out images and sounds to pull relevant information from.

It also possesses response capabilities across 26 languages, including Korean and Italian. And if asked, it can summarize novels and films by using a database trained on millions of books, webpages, and plenty of text data. Because its memory bank can now hold 64,000 words, it can also remember about 128 pages of conversational text  – handy if you need it to recall information from a previous conversation.

Then there’s the fun side to ChatGPT, which comes from making it do quirky and harmless stunts. For instance, you can use it to code a videogame but the AI is wonky and often truncates the coding thanks to the character count limit. It can also write a movie script very poorly, or you can make it talk to itself and watch as it descends into madness thanks to the closed loop of conversation swapping information that wasn’t very accurate to begin with.

There are so many uses for ChatGPT, especially the updated GPT-4 version that brings so many improvements to the AI chat application. Of course, the legal, moral, and physically dangerous ramifications of said AI technology need to be properly culled before we can truly use it as the force of good it was meant to be.

Allisa James
Computing Staff Writer

Named by the CTA as a CES 2023 Media Trailblazer, Allisa is a Computing Staff Writer who covers breaking news and rumors in the computing industry, as well as reviews, hands-on previews, featured articles, and the latest deals and trends. In her spare time you can find her chatting it up on her two podcasts, Megaten Marathon and Combo Chain, as well as playing any JRPGs she can get her hands on.