AIster · The ChatGPT shock · Products
OpenAI launches ChatGPT
A free “research preview” reaches a million users in five days
Key facts
- Date
- 30 Nov 2022
- Era
- The ChatGPT shock
- Interest
- Products
- Threads
- Model wars
- Who
- OpenAI
- What
- Free research preview of a chatbot fine-tuned from a GPT-3.5 series model
- Users
- 1 million users within five days (Sam Altman, 4 Dec 2022)
- Visitors
- About 100 million unique visitors in January 2023 (Similarweb)
On 30 November 2022 OpenAI published a short post titled “ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue” and opened a free research preview at chat.openai.com. The post explained that the dialogue format let ChatGPT “answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.”
What it was
ChatGPT was built on an existing foundation model (the large, general model a product sits on). OpenAI said it was fine-tuned from a model in the GPT-3.5 series that finished training in early 2022, using reinforcement learning from human feedback: AI trainers ranked alternative answers, and those rankings were used to train a reward model that steered the chatbot. The new part was the interface. Anyone with a browser could type a question in plain language and get a fluent answer back.
OpenAI was open about the limits. The launch post warned that ChatGPT “sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers”, and that it could be sensitive to small changes in how a question was phrased.
How fast it spread
Late on 4 December (Pacific time), OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman posted that ChatGPT had crossed one million users since launching the previous Wednesday. Data from Similarweb suggested the site had about 100 million unique visitors in January 2023. Analysts at UBS wrote that they could not recall a faster ramp for a consumer internet app in 20 years. By comparison, Sensor Tower data showed TikTok took about nine months to reach 100 million users and Instagram more than two years.
On 1 February 2023 OpenAI announced ChatGPT Plus, a $20-a-month subscription that promised a more stable and faster service, initially for users in the United States.
Why it matters
ChatGPT turned large language models from a research topic into something ordinary people used every day. It set off the chain of events that fills the rest of this era: Microsoft's deeper bet on OpenAI, Google's rushed reply with Bard, a scramble among other labs to ship their own assistants, and the first serious attempts by governments to regulate the technology.
Questions people ask
When did ChatGPT come out?
OpenAI released ChatGPT as a free research preview on 30 November 2022.
How fast did ChatGPT get 100 million users?
About two months. Similarweb data put it at roughly 100 million unique visitors in January 2023. Sensor Tower data showed TikTok took about nine months to reach 100 million users and Instagram more than two years.
Sources
- OpenAI, Introducing ChatGPT, 2022-11-30
- The Guardian, ChatGPT reaches 100 million users two months after launch, 2023-02-02
- Sam Altman on X, ChatGPT launched on wednesday. today it crossed 1 million users!, 2022-12-04
- OpenAI, Introducing ChatGPT Plus, 2023-02-01