ChatGPT
A research preview reaches a hundred million users in two months and starts an industrial race.
- When
- Known to
- ± 12 hours
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
OpenAI released ChatGPT on 30 November 2022 as a low-key demonstration of a model that had existed for months. It reached an estimated 100 million monthly users by January, the fastest adoption of any consumer application to that point. Within a year every large technology company had reoriented around generative AI, hundreds of billions in capital had followed, and arguments about authorship, employment and truth that had been academic became immediate.