OpenAI launches ChatGPT
Confirmed
Importance: historic (5 of 5)The takeaway
OpenAI released ChatGPT, a conversational interface to a GPT-3.5 model fine-tuned with RLHF, as a free research preview; it became the fastest-growing consumer app to that point and triggered the generative AI boom.
Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- Historic (5 of 5)
- Last verified
- 29 September 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 AstraIn its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5In its training data
- Gemini 4 HydrogenIn its training data
- Grok 4.7In its training data
It happened before the cutoffs of all four assistants, so it can be in their training data.
Key facts
- Launched 30 November 2022 as a free research preview
- Based on a model in the GPT-3.5 series, trained with RLHF
- Passed 1 million users within about five days
- Estimated at ~100M monthly users by January 2023 (UBS/Similarweb estimate)
- ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) launched February 2023
What happened
ChatGPT let anyone chat with a capable LLM for free; its viral success forced Google, Meta, Microsoft and others into an AI race.
Why it matters
The moment AI became a mass-market technology — the start of the current era of AI investment, adoption and policy attention.
Sources
2 sources from 2 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
2 sources: 1 primary, 1 reaction
Primary
- Introducing ChatGPT (OpenAI)openai.com, official
Reactions
- Wikipedia: ChatGPTen.wikipedia.org, discussion
Changes
- Filed