In offering its flagship technology to billions of iPhone users, OpenAI is solidifying its position among the giants of the tech industry. ChatGPT is the most prominent example of what is called generative A.I., technology that can generate text, images and other media based on short prompts. Google, Microsoft and various start-ups have released similar bots and have begun to roll such technology into a wide range of online services.

The result of more than a decade of research at companies like Google and OpenAI, these chatbots are poised to remake everything from internet search engines like Google Search and Bing to email programs like Gmail and Outlook.

They can generate digital text that can be used in almost any context, including for students to write term papers and businesspeople to create email messages and other marketing materials.

The technology is not perfect. Because these chatbots learn by analyzing vast amounts of digital text culled from across the internet, they cannot distinguish between fact and fiction. And the computer code they generate is often flawed.

Today, the technology tends to complement human workers rather than replace their skills outright.

OpenAI is not the first to introduce technology that lets people use ChatGPT with voice; some small companies and independent developers have already done so. Microsoft also offers a version of its Bing chatbot that responds to voice commands.