Talk to ChatGPT using Siri on your iPhone

It takes 10 minutes to setup ChatGPT on your iPhone. You will need an OpenAI account, a credit card with a few euros a month and an iOS shortcut.

Setup OpenAI account

  1. Create an OpenAI account at https://openai.com/api/login/. You will need a smartphone to confirm your account.

  2. Add a payment method at https://beta.openai.com/account/billing/payment-methods. You need to have a paid account. Remaining free credits won’t work.

  3. Configure soft/hard limits at https://beta.openai.com/account/billing/limits. A good limit for starters is 5$ soft limit and a 10$ hard limit. I used it every day for a month now and used up only 5$. Currently the costs are around 0.02$ per 1000 tokens. 1 token is about 1 word.

  4. Create an API key at https://beta.openai.com/account/api-keys. You can create as many keys as you want. I suggest to create one for each friend or family member, so you can remove one’s access by deleting the API key whenever necessary. Make sure to write down who uses which key.

(The above links might change one day. If so, go into your profile and navigate to the respective pages.)

Install iOS Shortcut

Make sure you have iOS 16.3 (or newer) installed. It’s out since Jan 24th 2023.

I’m german and I’m sharing the shortcut with family and friends, that’s why the shortcut is in german. Instructions to change it to your preferred language are below.

  1. Copy your API key you just created above into your clipboard (so you can paste it in the next step). It starts with “sk-…”.

  2. Install and configure the shortcut from https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/018d3a738039472b80080ceef709d41b.

  3. You will be asked to paste your API key (sk-…). Delete the complete text in the text field until empty. then paste the key in there.

  4. You will also be asked to enter a short phrase that Siri will say to signal/prompt you when it’s ready to listen to the next question. In german “Ich höre” makes sense, in english it could be “Go ahead” or “I’m listening” or “Shoot” – get creative!

  5. If you are non-german-speaking, you should also rename the shortcut itself from “Eine Frage” to something like “One question” or “Ask smartass” – whatever you like. This will be your Siri trigger, see next section. To do so, long-press the shortcut and select “Rename”.

  6. Start (Play) the shortcut and allow all requests from the app (connect to openai.com, speech recognition, clipboard). If you don’t accept, it won’t work. If you accidentally declined, you can long-press the shortcut, select “Details” and update the security/privacy allowances.

Everything is installed and configured now … and your shortcut already ran for the first time.

Use it

There are 3 ways to use the shortcut:

  1. Talk to Siri: Say “Hey Siri, eine Frage” (or the name of your shortcut) to trigger it. Alternatively press the power button on your phone until Siri starts and only say “Eine Frage”. It replies with “Ich höre” (or your renamed phrase). Now ask a really smart question. Siri/ChatGPT will answer and end with “Ich höre” so you can ask follow-up questions. Depending on your sound and Siri settings, the answer will be spoken out loud or only displayed on the screen.

  2. Create a home screen shortcut: Go into the iOS shortcuts app, long-press our shortcut, select “Share” and select “Add to home screen”. It will look like a regular app on your home screen and start in text-input mode.

  3. If your phone is unlocked (or on the home screen), you can also swipe down to open search and search for our shortcut. Also text-input mode.

One more cool feature I implemented: Your whole conversation is automatically copied into your clipboard, so you can paste it into any application (iMessage, WhatsApp, Mail, Notes, …) afterwards.

Side Notes

  • This shortcut also works on iPad, on your Mac, on your Apple Watch and even in your car if you use Apple CarPlay.

  • Currently ChatGPT is trained until 2021, so it’s still in the middle of the pandemic and doesn’t cover any present topics.

  • If you speak to Siri, it only works in the language you set Siri up for (since Siri is only there to transcribe/convert your voice into text). You can change it in your phone’s settings. If you “write” with the shortcut/ChatGPT though (ways 2 and 3 from the section above), ChatGPT can handle any language. Pretty amazing.

Encore

I did a few more shortcuts for available endpoints of the API. Here they are:

Feedback to this article and my shortcuts are welcome. You can find me on LinkedIn.

Be aware that Chat GPT is still in beta and even if it gets out of beta some day: It’s AI, based on a model trained from content on the internet. Whatever it tells you, don’t take it as a fact. You don’t know the source of the information, do your research before you rely on those infos.

One more thing

My shortcut is free. Share it with anyone you like. Apps on the AppStores doing less currently cost around 8$ a week! A week! No need to use those.

Rather consider donating some euros/dollars to a charity of your liking. It really helps. It really, really helps. It really does.

And if you are on any social media platform, stand up for social justice, share content, give those courageous protesters, risking their lives, a voice. Let them be heard. It matters.

Thank you.

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