OpenAI is rolling out a seasonal enhancement for ChatGPT that lets users interact with a simulated Santa Claus using the app’s voice features. The Santa persona is introduced as a temporary, holiday-focused option within Advanced Voice Mode, accessible across mobile, desktop, and web interfaces. The update emphasizes a festive, kid-friendly experience while preserving user privacy by treating Santa conversations as ephemeral chats that do not persist in chat history or memory. Alongside Santa Mode, OpenAI is also expanding the capabilities of Advanced Voice Mode with real-time video and screen-sharing options, signaling a broader push to make voice interactions more visual and interactive on supported devices and plans.
Santa Mode: Access, Behavior, and Limitations
OpenAI has integrated a dedicated Santa voice and personality as a preset option within ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode. Users can access the feature by tapping a snowflake icon located next to the prompt bar or by navigating through the voice settings menu. The feature is designed for a broad reach, functioning across iOS and Android mobile apps, the web interface at chatgpt.com, and OpenAI’s Windows and macOS applications. This ensures a consistent Santa experience across the major platforms where ChatGPT is used.
The Santa mode is presented as a seasonal install, with availability worldwide limited to the holiday period and scheduled to remain active until early January. This timing reflects the seasonal intent and aligns with the traditional holiday window when families commonly engage in festive activities and storytelling. Because the feature is time-bound, users should plan to explore Santa’s interactions within the window of availability rather than expecting year-round access. The seasonal nature of the feature helps maintain a fresh, festive atmosphere while avoiding long-term alterations to the core model’s behavior.
Conversations with Santa are designed to be temporary. Each Santa chat exists as a standalone session and will not be saved to the user’s chat history, nor will it influence the model’s memory for future interactions. This design choice is intentional and aligns with the holiday feature’s privacy considerations. Parents and guardians can feel reassured that what they or their children say in Santa conversations will not persist beyond the chat. In practice, this means Santa will not remember prior chats or recall details from earlier sessions if a user returns to talk again later. The ephemeral nature of the chats ensures that the Santa experience remains a unique, one-off engagement each time a user initiates a session during the holiday period.
During a promotional livestream marking the sixth day of OpenAI’s holiday campaign, it was announced that OpenAI would grant a one-time reset of Advanced Voice Mode usage limits for each user. This reset provides an additional chance to talk to Santa even if a user has already exhausted their usual Advanced Voice Mode time. The gift-like reset demonstrates OpenAI’s commitment to maximizing the holiday experience and ensuring that a broad audience can access Santa Mode without rigid usage constraints during the seasonal period. The reset is targeted as a one-time gesture, reinforcing the festive, shareable nature of the feature while encouraging wider experimentation with the rest of the Advanced Voice Mode offerings.
As part of the Santa experience, users will notice that Santa’s interactions are designed to be light, engaging, and appropriate for a family-friendly setting. The emphasis remains on delivering a cheerful, seasonal atmosphere rather than altering the broader capabilities of ChatGPT. By isolating Santa conversations from the general chat history and memory, OpenAI provides a clear boundary between the holiday feature and ongoing usage, helping to avoid cross-session interference with regular inquiries or tasks. This approach balances novelty with consistent performance in everyday use.
Video and Screen Sharing: Expanding Advanced Voice Mode Capabilities
In addition to the Santa feature, OpenAI is rolling out video and screen-sharing capabilities within ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode. This enhancement represents a significant step forward for real-time, visual communication in the app. The new tools allow users to share what they see in their surroundings or display content directly to their conversation partner without needing to describe items aloud or upload separate images. By enabling live video and screen sharing, ChatGPT can bridge the gap between conversational AI and collaborative, visual interactions.
Activation occurs through the same voice interface used for Santa. Users can begin by tapping the voice icon and selecting either the video option or the screen-sharing option from the ensuing menu. The simplicity of this toggle makes it straightforward for users to switch between voice-only and video-enabled modes during a chat, depending on the context and the information being discussed. The experience is designed to be intuitive and fluid, reducing friction for users who want to share a reminder, a chart, a document, or an on-screen task without interrupting the flow of conversation.
OpenAI notes that this video and screen-sharing capability is rolling out gradually across regions and plans. Plus and Pro subscribers in most countries will gain access to real-time video conversations through the mobile app as part of the broader enhancement. However, some regions in Europe, including the EU, will receive access at a later date. This phased approach allows OpenAI to monitor performance, address regional considerations, and ensure a stable rollout across diverse markets. Enterprise and education users are expected to receive the video features in January, aligning with their distinct deployment timelines and organizational needs.
The video and screen-sharing tools provide practical benefits for a wide range of use cases. For example, users can show a live workspace, review a whiteboard, or present a tutorial without leaving the chat. The screen-sharing option enables direct content exchange, making it easier to collaborate on projects, compare data, or walk through a process with visual references. The video feature, in turn, can help convey tone, context, and nonverbal cues that enhance understanding in complex discussions. Taken together, these features aim to make ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode a more versatile and hands-on communication tool.
Availability, Limits, and User Experience
The Santa Mode feature is explicitly designed as a holiday-specific experience with a defined end date in early January, ensuring users enjoy a seasonal novelty without altering long-term usage patterns. The temporary chats do not save to chat history or influence the model’s memory beyond that session, preserving privacy and preventing cross-session continuity for Santa-related conversations. This design is particularly relevant for families seeking playful engagement during the holidays while maintaining a clean slate for future interactions.
The one-time reset of Advanced Voice Mode usage limits is described as a guest enhancement during the Day 6 livestream of the holiday campaign. This reset is intended to maximize access to Santa and the season’s other features, allowing more users to experiment with Advanced Voice Mode even if they reach their standard usage cap. The reset is described as a temporary, limited-time allowance rather than a permanent policy change, reinforcing the seasonal, promotional nature of the gesture. Users should view it as an opportunity to explore Santa Mode and related capabilities without worrying about exhausting their usage allotment too quickly.
The rollout of video and screen sharing is being paced to balance performance and regional readiness. While Plus and Pro subscribers in most regions can participate in real-time video conversations on mobile devices, some regions in Europe will see access later. This staggered plan reflects the complexities of supporting high-bandwidth, real-time media across diverse networks and regulatory environments. For enterprise and educational users, the video features are slated for January, indicating a broader enterprise-grade rollout that accommodates organizational use cases, governance requirements, and IT management considerations.
From a user experience perspective, the combination of Santa Mode and Enhanced Voice Mode features aims to deliver a more immersive, family-friendly, and productive ChatGPT experience during the holiday season. The temporary nature of Santa conversations helps prevent clutter in a user’s long-term chat history while still delivering a memorable, festive interaction. Meanwhile, the video and screen-sharing enhancements offer practical tools for collaboration, learning, and entertainment, expanding the ways users can engage with ChatGPT beyond text and voice alone. The overall approach emphasizes intuitive controls, cross-platform compatibility, and region-aware rollout timing to maximize accessibility and satisfaction.
Marketing Context and Future Outlook
This holiday update fits into OpenAI’s broader strategy of expanding ChatGPT’s usability through multimodal features and engaging personas. The Santa Mode addition aligns with consumer expectations for festive experiences while also highlighting the platform’s ability to adapt voice and personality to seasonal themes. By packaging Santa as a selectable preset within Advanced Voice Mode, OpenAI creates a clear, memorable entry point for families and casual users alike to explore the capabilities of voice-enabled AI in a safe, controlled environment.
The simultaneous introduction of video and screen sharing signals a longer-term direction for ChatGPT as a collaborative assistant. Real-time video conversations and seamless content sharing can transform how users prepare for holidays, collaborate on projects, or simply share information with friends and colleagues. The regional rollout plan, which prioritizes Plus and Pro users while guiding EU and enterprise segments to later or January launch dates, helps manage the technical and regulatory considerations inherent in delivering high-quality multimedia experiences.
From a consumer perspective, the Santa Mode feature invites families to engage with AI in a friendly, accessible way without concerns about permanent changes to memory or data retention. The ephemeral chats protect privacy while offering an enjoyable, seasonal touch. The video and screen-sharing enhancements, once broadly available, promise to enrich conversations by providing visual context and direct access to on-screen materials. Together, these developments position ChatGPT as a more versatile, everyday tool capable of handling both informal, recreational interactions and structured, collaborative tasks.
In the longer term, this combination of seasonal personas and multimedia capabilities could pave the way for more personalized, context-rich experiences. OpenAI’s approach suggests a strategy of layering playful, thematic modes with robust, enterprise-ready features, enabling a wider spectrum of users to discover and adopt advanced AI tools in ways that fit their unique needs. As the rollout progresses, users can anticipate refinements in performance, regional availability, and integrations that further enhance how they interact with ChatGPT across devices and settings.
Conclusion
OpenAI’s latest update brings a festive Santa Mode to ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode, offering a playful, temporary AI Santa that users can converse with through voice on multiple platforms. The feature’s ephemeral chats, accessible worldwide until early January, ensure a privacy-conscious and family-friendly experience without affecting memory or chat history. At the same time, OpenAI is expanding Advanced Voice Mode with video and screen-sharing capabilities, enabling real-time visual interactions and direct content sharing on supported plans and regions. The rollout is staged to balance performance and regional readiness, with EU regions and enterprise customers joining later in the cycle.
Taken together, Santa Mode and the video/screen-sharing enhancements position ChatGPT as a more versatile, seasonally engaging, and collaboration-ready assistant. The updates align with a broader trend toward multimodal AI that can adapt to both casual, festive usage and professional, content-sharing workflows. For users eager to explore the holiday experience or test new multimedia features, the season provides a timely opportunity to discover how AI can enrich conversations, storytelling, and collaborative tasks across devices. As OpenAI continues to refine and expand these capabilities, users can look forward to broader access, improved performance, and a more integrated, media-rich way to interact with ChatGPT in the months ahead.
