[ChatGPT Group Chats] Provide a family shared-chat successor before existing groups become read-only

Summary

Please provide a supported family/shared-chat successor before existing ChatGPT Group Chats become read-only, or publish a concrete migration path for family collaboration workflows that depend on multiple people and ChatGPT sharing one live conversation.

I currently use an existing Group Chat with my children as a shared learning space. A parent and child can participate in the same conversation with ChatGPT, see the same context, discuss answers together, and use the room to teach responsible AI use, Study Mode, coding, and other ChatGPT features.

OpenAI's current retirement documentation says Group Chats began winding down on July 9, 2026, existing groups remain active during the transition, and they will later become read-only. It also says OpenAI is continuing to explore more collaborative ChatGPT experiences.

Official retirement source:
https://help.openai.com/en/articles/12703475-retiring-group-chats-in-chatgpt

Original Group Chats announcement:
https://openai.com/index/group-chats-in-chatgpt/

Problem

I have not found a currently documented replacement that preserves the defining Group Chat capability:

• multiple family members participating in the same live ChatGPT conversation;
• ChatGPT responding inside that shared conversation;
• everyone seeing the same context, explanations, links, files, and images;
• a parent being able to guide a teen's use of ChatGPT while the teen participates directly;
• age-appropriate protections applying when a minor is present.

Individual chats, shared links, parental controls, and Projects solve different problems. They do not by themselves recreate a live parent + child + ChatGPT conversation with common context.

Verified comparison with Shared Projects

I re-checked the current official Projects in ChatGPT documentation because Shared Projects appear to be the closest available alternative:

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10169521-projects-in-chatgpt

Shared Projects do provide meaningful collaboration:

• all project members can view the project's chats and files;
• each chat is associated with its author;
• members can create new chats, move chats into the project, and branch a teammate's chat;
• the shared project provides common files, instructions, and project-only memory/context.

However, the same official FAQ expressly distinguishes this from Group Chats. Under Can members work together on the same chat?, OpenAI states that chats in shared projects can be branched, not collaborated on synchronously.

That means a two-account test behaves differently from a Group Chat:

• Account A can create a chat inside the shared Project.
• Account B should be able to see that chat in the shared Project.
• Account B cannot join Account A's exact thread as a second human participant and append messages into the same live conversation.
• To build on Account A's thread, Account B branches it, producing a separate chat that project members can see.
• If Account A and Account B each start their own project chat, those remain separate conversations even though they share project context.

There is also an education-specific limitation in the current Projects documentation: Study Mode and scheduled Study hours do not apply to Project conversations.

So Shared Projects are a useful shared context hub, but they are not an equivalent replacement for the family Group Chat workflow. They currently lack both:

1. synchronous multi-human participation in the same ChatGPT conversation; and
2. Study Mode inside Project conversations.

This makes the migration gap concrete rather than theoretical.

Requested feature / migration path

A successor could be called Family Chat, Shared Chat, or another collaborative-chat experience. The name matters less than preserving the capability.

Useful requirements would include:

1. Multiple family members in one live ChatGPT conversation.
2. Parent/guardian and teen roles integrated with existing parental controls.
3. Age-appropriate protections when a teen participates.
4. Shared educational conversations, with Study Mode support.
5. Shared links, files, images, and conversational context.
6. Clear member/invite/remove permissions.
7. Optional room-level instructions/preferences that are separate from each person's private memory.
8. A migration or continuity path from existing Group Chats before they become read-only.
9. Clear documentation explaining what users should move to and what data/context carries forward.

If Shared Projects are intended to become the migration path, please add or document:

• synchronous same-chat collaboration rather than branch-only collaboration;
• Study Mode support in shared Project conversations;
• parent/guardian and teen roles / parental-control integration; and
• a supported Group Chat → Shared Project migration path that preserves useful shared history/context.

Family learning use case

This is not only a social-chat request.

A shared family conversation lets a parent:

• teach children how to ask better questions;
• correct misunderstandings in the same context;
• demonstrate how to verify ChatGPT answers;
• help with coding/technical learning together;
• supervise AI use without impersonating or taking over the child's individual account;
• model responsible use of new ChatGPT features.

The original Group Chats announcement specifically described bringing friends, family, or coworkers into the same conversation and included additional protections for younger users. That family use case should not disappear without a functional successor or migration path.

Expected documentation before read-only transition

Before active existing groups become read-only, please publish one of the following:

• the supported successor and migration steps; or
• an explicit statement that there is currently no equivalent replacement, together with recommended alternatives and the limitations of each.

The current retirement article preserves history but does not identify an equivalent multi-user ChatGPT conversation experience.

Duplicate search

I searched the current openai/codex issue tracker for combinations of Group Chats, family collaboration, replacement, and retiring and did not find an exact existing request.

Scope note

This is a ChatGPT product feature request, not a Codex feature. I am filing it in this public tracker because there is no dedicated public ChatGPT GitHub issue tracker exposed in the current documentation, and this repository already contains open ChatGPT Web/Desktop product reports. If another public tracker is preferred, please redirect or transfer the request so the family collaboration use case is not lost during the Group Chats retirement.