OpenAI brings unlimited ChatGPT text chats to free users
OpenAI is removing limits on text-based chats for all users on ChatGPT, which recently crossed the 1 billion weekly user mark, the company announced today. The new GPT-5.6 Luna model will power this experience and will be the default model for Free and Go users, replacing GPT-5.5. Both users will also get a new “Think” button that lets them select higher reasoning power for complex questions.
- ▪OpenAI is removing limits on text-based chats for all users on ChatGPT, which recently crossed the 1 billion weekly user mark, the company announced today.
- ▪The new GPT-5.6 Luna model will power this experience and will be the default model for Free and Go users, replacing GPT-5.5.
- ▪Both users will also get a new “Think” button that lets them select higher reasoning power for complex questions.
6 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 1 hour. All of the coverage we found sits in one bucket: centre. That one-sidedness is itself worth noticing.
- ▪ OpenAI updates the default model for free users to GPT-5.6 Luna, adds unlimited text chats for free users, rolls out an improved GPT-5.6 Sol version, and more (Herb Scribner/Axios) — Techmeme
- ▪ OpenAI updating ChatGPT with a smarter GPT-5.6 Sol and unlimited free chats — 9to5Mac
- ▪ You Can Now Have Unlimited Text Chats Without Paying for ChatGPT — CNET — News
- ▪ OpenAI makes major upgrades for free and paid ChatGPT users. Here's what they are - Axios — Google News
- ▪ OpenAI is giving ChatGPT free users unlimited text chats — The Verge
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Story provenance
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Record
| Original publisher | TechCrunch |
| Canonical URL | https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/06/openai-brings-unlimited-chatgpt-text-chats-to-free-users/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 06 Aug 2026 17:34:42 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-06T17:35:43.090Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-06T17:35:43.090Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | Oj2Ta2LrkCMA · 7 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
OpenAI is removing limits on text-based chats for all users on ChatGPT, which recently crossed the 1 billion weekly user mark, the company announced today. The new GPT-5.6 Luna model will power this experience and will be the default model for Free and Go users, replacing GPT-5.5. Both users will also get a new “Think” button that lets them select higher reasoning power for complex questions. OpenAI said that there will still be separate limits for files, images, voice, and image generation. Image Credits: OpenAIImage Credits:OpenAI The update brings changes for Plus and Pro users, as well. They’ll gain access to an upgraded GPT-5.6 Sol model that’s better for quick tasks such as questions, web research, advice, planning, writing, and making decisions.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechCrunch.
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