Talk to ChatGPT using Siri on your iPhone

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.)

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.

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.

• 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.

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

• Text variieren: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d599ee218b4244d2999a23de8cba3183 This talks to the “edits” endpoint with “text-davinci-edit-001”. It can be used for translations, grammar/spelling mistakes, changing the tone of a text. Copy a text into your clipboard, then enter how you would like to modify the text. (You can change the german instructions if you edit the shortcut. Long-press “Edit”, remember?)

• Bild erstellen: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/a2ca21807d064eb6bebdde42064b91cd Not as crazily impressive as Midjourney, but it will still create a cool image from text input. Clarification: It won't search for a picture that matches on the internet, it really generates a new one. (talks to “images/generations”)

• Bild variieren: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/91abcb20f2124fb6a16490b087ac48ba Funny proof of concept rather than really usable. Try it with photos of you and your friends. It will simply change faces and other elements of the picture you provide.

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.

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.