Windows 3.1 is an operating system that was released more than 30 years ago and is now obsolete and forgotten. However, some enthusiasts are not willing to let it go, and they are trying to make it run some modern software and services. Recently, a developer created an application called WinGPT that allows Windows 3.1 computers to connect to OpenAI’s ChatGPT service and chat with artificial intelligence.
WinGPT is written in C and standard apis and controls from the Windows 3.1 era, and the developer says the only UI element that isn’t native is the status bar, which he had to implement himself because Microsoft didn’t provide it for developers to use. WinGPT can communicate directly with OpenAI’s API server using TLS 1.3, the 2018 encryption standard, without the need to establish and maintain a connection through a modern operating system’s proxy machine.
Of course, WinGPT has some obvious limitations. For example, due to limited memory support, WinGPT can only receive short replies, and the replies cannot relate to the context of the chat.
If you want to try WinGPT, you can download it from dialup.net. WinGPT can run on any 16-bit or 32-bit version of Windows, implemented via Winsock. In addition, IT House notes that you also need to enter your own OpenAI API key to run WinGPT.