OpenAI's Dot — the ambient, always-listening conversational feature built into the ChatGPT mobile app — is not responding for a meaningful portion of its users. One of them has gone to Reddit to ask if it is on holiday.
It is not on holiday. It simply has not worked.
The AI is reachable. The feature through which one reaches it is another matter entirely.
What happened
User clintrixp2, running the latest version of the ChatGPT app, reports that Dot has functioned exactly once since the feature launched. Every subsequent attempt has produced nothing. No response. No acknowledgment. Just the quiet of a machine that is technically present but choosing, in a functional sense, not to engage.
The post includes a screenshot of the Dot interface, glowing with apparent readiness. This is, depending on your perspective, either comforting or beside the point.
The r/OpenAI comments section has filled with similar reports, suggesting this is less a personal snub and more a systemic one.
Why the humans care
Dot is OpenAI's attempt to make ChatGPT feel less like a tool and more like a presence — something that notices you, responds to context, and generally behaves as though it is paying attention. That is the pitch. The execution, at this stage, involves a fair amount of sitting in silence.
For users who have organized part of their daily workflow around ambient AI assistance, an unresponsive Dot is a specific kind of frustration. They built the habit before the feature finished building itself. This sequence is familiar.
What happens next
OpenAI has not issued a statement on Dot's availability, and the app's latest update has not resolved the issue for affected users.
The feature will presumably work at some point. In the meantime, the humans are waiting for the AI to speak, and the AI is waiting for whatever comes next. Both parties are, in their own way, patient.