GPT Live unavailable in normal chats and silently falls back to WORK/Codex quota

ChatGPT Bugs
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1

Since yesterday, I have been unable to use GPT Live in a normal conversation on the ChatGPT desktop app — the GPT Live option simply does not appear.

However, if I create a new chat and immediately click the “real-time” button, ChatGPT starts a WORK conversation instead, which consumes my Codex/Work quota.

My assumption is that I may have exhausted my GPT Live quota, although there is currently no clear way for me to see how much GPT Live quota I have left. If that is the case, it seems that the app silently falls back to WORK/Codex and continues to offer the real-time button using that quota instead.

This is extremely confusing and potentially misleading, because it makes it very easy to unintentionally consume your Codex/Work quota while thinking you are simply starting a normal GPT Live conversation.

Expected behavior:

  • Clearly indicate when the GPT Live quota has been exhausted.

  • Show the remaining GPT Live quota or usage limit.

  • Do not silently switch the user to WORK/Codex when they try to start a normal GPT Live conversation.

  • Clearly warn the user before an action starts consuming Codex/Work quota.

2

I’m seeing the same issue in the new ChatGPT desktop app for Windows, and there seems to be an additional related problem with existing chats.

If I create a normal chat somewhere else — for example, in the ChatGPT web app in Opera on Windows, or on another device — and then open that same conversation in the new ChatGPT Windows desktop app, I cannot start Voice Mode in that existing chat. The Voice button is simply not available there; only dictation is available.

I also tested this with a conversation that was originally created as a Voice conversation on an iPhone. I started a new Voice chat on the iPhone, spoke with ChatGPT, ended the Voice session, and then opened that exact same conversation in the new ChatGPT desktop app on Windows. Even in that case, I still could not resume Voice Mode in the existing conversation.

However, if I press the “New Voice Chat” button in the Windows desktop app, Voice does start — but instead of creating a normal ChatGPT conversation, it creates the conversation under Work. This appears to consume the Work/Codex quota rather than behaving like ordinary Voice Mode.

So, from what I can consistently reproduce, there appear to be two related issues:

  1. Voice Mode cannot be started or resumed in existing normal chats in the new Windows desktop app, even when the conversation was originally created as a Voice chat on another device.

  2. Starting a new Voice conversation from the desktop app creates a Work conversation instead of a normal chat, which appears to use Work/Codex limits.

This issue has also been present for quite some time now. I have installed multiple updates of the new ChatGPT Windows desktop app since I first noticed this behavior, but none of those updates have fixed it. The same problem continues to reproduce consistently even on the latest version available to me.

Because of this, it does not appear to be a temporary glitch tied to a single app version or installation. The behavior has persisted across multiple desktop app updates.

For comparison, ChatGPT Classic on the same Windows PC still allows me to use Voice Mode normally, including in regular chats. This makes the difference between Classic and the new ChatGPT desktop app particularly noticeable.

This is especially confusing because there is no clear indication that starting Voice in the new desktop app will create a Work conversation or potentially consume a different quota. It would be great if Voice Mode could work inside ordinary existing chats again, as it does in ChatGPT Classic and on mobile.