I have seen plenty of companies shove AI into products where it feels forced. This is not one of those times.
Rakuten Viber has partnered with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT directly into its messaging app, and the integration feels like one of the more practical uses of AI I have seen lately. Instead of making users bounce between apps, Viber puts ChatGPT right where conversations are already happening.
The update is rolling out now for Viber on iPhone and Android in most countries where ChatGPT is available. Desktop support is coming later. Better yet, you do not need a ChatGPT account to use most of the new AI features, although signing in unlocks higher usage limits and is required for the new image editing tools.
The biggest addition is a dedicated ChatGPT contact inside Viber. You can ask questions, brainstorm ideas, draft messages, settle arguments with friends, or simply chat with the AI without leaving the app. Viber also lets you tag @ChatGPT in private and group conversations so everyone can see the response and keep the discussion going. According to the company, only the messages that directly involve ChatGPT are shared with OpenAI rather than the entire conversation.
There is a lot more here than just an AI chatbot. Viber can summarize long chats so you can catch up in seconds, generate summaries of articles and web pages that people share, translate messages into other languages, and rewrite your own messages before you send them. There is also Image Remix, which uses ChatGPT to transform photos with different styles and effects.
What I like most is that these features solve actual problems. Summarizing a chaotic group chat or helping rewrite an awkward message are things people will probably use every day. That feels a lot more useful than bolting AI onto a product just so the company can say it has AI.
Of course, bringing AI into a messaging app also raises privacy questions. Viber says its end-to-end encryption remains intact for regular conversations and that only the specific text or images you choose to process are sent to OpenAI. The company also says that data is retained only for a limited time and is not used to train OpenAI’s models.
Will ChatGPT convince millions of people to switch to Viber? I am not so sure. Apps like WhatsApp and iMessage have enormous momentum. Still, if you are already a Viber user, this is one of the more compelling AI integrations to arrive in a messaging app. Unlike many AI announcements these days, this one feels like it could genuinely make the app more useful.
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