Two months after it launched at the end of November 2022, the chatbot has amassed 100 million users, beating apps such as TikTok, which took nine months to reach that milestone and Instagram which took 30 months.
The invention of California startup OpenAI, ChatGPT is being hailed as the most exciting thing that has happened in technology since the advent of the internet, the first search engine or the launch of the iPhone.
There is been a lot of hype, but it is largely justified. ChatGPT can answer queries in 95 languages in a human-like conversational style, learning from your responses as it goes.
Web visits in January alone were estimated at 672 million.
Ask any question and it will be able to provide a text response, although there are certain limitations.
Because ChatGPT is so human-like in its comprehensive and mostly accurate answers, it threatens to do away with search engines, or at least to force a radical reimagining.
Google and a host of other tech companies are racing to catch up with OpenAI, but for now, it is ChatGPT that is the fastest-growing app ever.
If you haven’t used ChatGPT yet, set up an account and get started here: https://chat.openai.com/chat
