According to analysts, ChatGPT, the popular artificial intelligence chatbot, has reached 100 million users just two months after its launch.
According to data firm Similarweb, it received approximately 590 million visits in January from 100 million unique visitors. According to UBS analysts, the rate of growth for a consumer app is unprecedented.
“In 20 years following the internet space, we cannot recall a faster ramp in a consumer internet app,” UBS analysts wrote in the note, reported by Reuters.
According to Sensor Tower, an app analysis firm, TikTok took about nine months after its global launch to reach 100 million users, while Instagram took more than two years.
In response to text prompts, ChatGPT can generate articles, essays, jokes, poetry, and job applications. In late November, OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft, made it freely available to the public.
OpenAI also created the AI-powered image generator Dall-E and is at the forefront of generative AI, which is technology that has been trained on massive amounts of text and images and can generate content from a simple text prompt.
OpenAI announced a $20 monthly subscription on Thursday, initially for users in the United States only. According to the company, it will provide a more stable and faster service as well as the opportunity to test new features first.
Analysts believe that the viral launch of ChatGPT will give OpenAI a competitive advantage over other AI firms. While increasing usage imposes significant computing costs on OpenAI, it has also provided valuable feedback to help train the chatbot’s responses.
The subscription revenue would help cover the computing costs, according to OpenAI, which is based in San Francisco.
Microsoft announced another multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI last month, this time in the form of cash and cloud computing. Microsoft launched a premium version of its Teams product, powered by ChatGPT, on Wednesday, with AI-powered extras like automatically generated meeting notes. Based on the meeting transcript, the tool also divides meeting recaps into sections.
