The 100-million sprint

Backed by Elon Musk and Microsoft, the AI chatbot has become the fastest-growing app in the world

The conversational AI, ChatGPT, has rapidly gained popularity since its launch last December. Developed by OpenAI, the chatbot crossed the 100 million user mark in just two months. As reported by SimilarWeb, ChatGPT had an impressive 13 million daily users in January 2023 alone. This growth is unprecedented compared to other social media apps like Instagram and TikTok, which took

2.5 years and nine months respectively to reach 100 million users.

Similarweb estimates that the chat.openai.com site has attracted around 25 million visitors per day in recent weeks and has seen an average daily growth rate of 3.4% over the past month. On 31 January this year, the site hit its peak with 28 million hits from 15.7 million unique visitors.

Early on its journey, the Elon Musk-backed AI chatbot, crossed the one million users mark within five days of its launch leaving behind popular online platforms and services like Instagram, Spotify, Dropbox, and Facebook that reached the milestone in less than a year. Instagram, for example, achieved one million users in 2.5 months, as measured by app downloads. Spotify and Dropbox also reached the mark in five and seven months, respectively, as they offer practical, immediate benefits to users.

While social media services generally took longer to reach one million users in the past, this has changed over time as the Internet has become more widely available. Also, Netflix which was launched as a subscription-based service in 1999 took 3.5 years to reach one million users. Similarly, it took Airbnb 2.5 years and Twitter two years to reach the one million user base.

The rapid growth of ChatGPT has caught the attention of incumbent internet giants, including Google, with CEO Sundar Pichai referring to the capabilities of AI and the world’s eagerness to use it in a recent earnings call. This has led to increased competition in the AI chatbot space, with China’s Baidu announcing plans to develop their own ChatGPT-rival soon.

“We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratise AI.”

Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft

Interestingly, while Bill Gates has warned that AI technology like ChatGPT could replace human workers in white-collar jobs, Microsoft has announced a multimillion-dollar investment in OpenAI. “We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratise AI as a new technology platform,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said in a statement.

Microsoft is also reported to have said it would soon add ChatGPT features to its cloud computing service, Azure. If ChatGPT becomes available on that service, businesses could use the tools directly within its apps and services. Experts believe that the investment could also establish Microsoft as an AI leader and ultimately pave the way for the company to incorporate ChatGPT into its office tools.

OpenAI has also introduced the ChatGPT Plus model, which offers a faster response time, priority access to new features, and guaranteed service during peak hours for a monthly subscription fee of USD 20, currently only available in the US.

(This report has been written by ChatGPT using the information fed as a prompt by the V&D edit team)

feedbackvnd@cybermedia.co.in