ChatGPT: The AI Chatbot Revolutionizing Technology and Society

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI chatbot

ChatGPT, OpenAI's text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership with Apple for its generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, the release of GPT-4o with voice capabilities, and the highly-anticipated launch of its text-to-video model Sora. OpenAI also faced its share of internal drama, including the notable exits of high-level execs like co-founder and longtime chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and CTO Mira Murati. OpenAI has also been hit with lawsuits from Alden Global Capital-owned newspapers alleging copyright infringement, as well as an injunction from Elon Musk to halt OpenAI's transition to a for-profit. In 2025, OpenAI is battling the perception that it's ceding ground in the AI race to Chinese rivals like DeepSeek. The company has been trying to shore up its relationship with Washington as it simultaneously pursues an ambitious data center project, and as it reportedly lays the groundwork for one of the largest funding rounds in history. Below, you'll find a timeline of ChatGPT product updates and releases, starting with the latest, which we've been updating throughout the year. If you have any other questions, check out our ChatGPT FAQ here. OpenAI has launched a new feature for ChatGPT deep research to analyze code repositories on GitHub. The ChatGPT deep research feature is in beta and lets developers connect with GitHub to ask questions about codebases and engineering documents. The connector will soon be available for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team users, with support for Enterprise and Education coming shortly, per an OpenAI spokesperson. After introducing a data residency program in Europe in February, OpenAI has now launched a similar program in Asian countries including India, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. The new program will be accessible to users of ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and API. It will help organizations in Asia meet their local data sovereignty requirements when using OpenAI's products. OpenAI is unveiling a program called OpenAI for Countries, which aims to develop the necessary local infrastructure to serve international AI clients better. The AI startup will work with governments to assist with increasing data center capacity and customizing OpenAI's products to meet specific language and local needs. OpenAI for Countries is part of efforts to support the company's expansion of its AI data center Project Stargate to new locations outside the U.S., per Bloomberg. OpenAI has announced its plan to make changes to its procedures for updating the AI models that power ChatGPT, following an update that caused the platform to become overly sycophantic for many users. OpenAI has released a post on the recent sycophancy issues with the default AI model powering ChatGPT, GPT-4o, leading the company to revert an update to the model released last week. CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the issue on Sunday and confirmed two days later that the GPT-4o update was being rolled back. OpenAI is working on "additional fixes" to the model's personality. Over the weekend, users on social media criticized the new model for making ChatGPT too validating and agreeable. It became a popular meme fast. An issue within OpenAI's ChatGPT enabled the chatbot to create graphic erotic content for accounts registered by users under the age of 18, as demonstrated by TechCrunch's testing, a fact later confirmed by OpenAI. "Protecting younger users is a top priority, and our Model Spec, which guides model behavior, clearly restricts sensitive content like erotica to narrow contexts such as scientific, historical, or news reporting," a spokesperson told TechCrunch via email. "In this case, a bug allowed responses outside those guidelines, and we are actively deploying a fix to limit these generations." OpenAI has added a few features to its ChatGPT search, its web search tool in ChatGPT, to give users an improved online shopping experience. The company says people can ask super-specific questions using natural language and receive customized results. The chatbot provides recommendations, images, and reviews of products in various categories such as fashion, beauty, home goods, and electronics. OpenAI leaders have been talking about allowing the open model to link up with OpenAI's cloud-hosted models to improve its ability to respond to intricate questions, two sources familiar with the situation told TechCrunch. OpenAI is preparing to launch an AI system that will be openly accessible, allowing users to download it for free without any API restrictions. Aidan Clark, OpenAI's VP of research, is spearheading the development of the open model, which is in the very early stages, sources familiar with the situation told TechCrunch. OpenAI released a new AI model called GPT-4.1 in mid-April. However, multiple independent tests indicate that the model is less reliable than previous OpenAI releases. The company skipped that step -- sending safety cards for GPT-4.1 -- claiming in a statement to TechCrunch that "GPT-4.1 is not a frontier model, so there won't be a separate system card released for it." Questions have been raised regarding OpenAI's transparency and procedures for testing models after a difference in benchmark outcomes was detected by first- and third-party benchmark results for the o3 AI model. OpenAI introduced o3 in December, stating that the model could solve approximately 25% of questions on FrontierMath, a difficult math problem set. Epoch AI, the research institute behind FrontierMath, discovered that o3 achieved a score of approximately 10%, which was significantly lower than OpenAI's top-reported score. OpenAI has launched a new API feature called Flex processing that allows users to use AI models at a lower cost but with slower response times and occasional resource unavailability. Flex processing is available in beta on the o3 and o4-mini reasoning models for non-production tasks like model evaluations, data enrichment, and asynchronous workloads. OpenAI has rolled out a new system to monitor its AI reasoning models, o3 and o4 mini, for biological and chemical threats. The system is designed to prevent models from giving advice that could potentially lead to harmful attacks, as stated in OpenAI's safety report. OpenAI has released two new reasoning models, o3 and o4 mini, just two days after launching GPT-4.1. The company claims o3 is the most advanced reasoning model it has developed, while o4-mini is said to provide a balance of price, speed, and performance. The new models stand out from previous reasoning models because they can use ChatGPT features like web browsing, coding, and image processing and generation. But they hallucinate more than several of OpenAI's previous models. Open AI introduced a new section called "library" to make it easier for users to create images on mobile and web platforms, per the company's X post. OpenAI said on Tuesday that it might revise its safety standards if "another frontier AI developer releases a high-risk system without comparable safeguards." The move shows how commercial AI developers face more pressure to rapidly implement models due to the increased competition. OpenAI is currently in the early stages of developing its own social media platform to compete with Elon Musk's X and Mark Zuckerberg's Instagram and Threads, according to The Verge. It is unclear whether OpenAI intends to launch the social network as a standalone application or incorporate it into ChatGPT. OpenAI will discontinue its largest AI model, GPT-4.5, from its API even though it was just launched in late February. GPT-4.5 will be available in a research preview for paying customers. Developers can use GPT-4.5 through OpenAI's API until July 14; then, they will need to switch to GPT-4.1, which was released on April 14. OpenAI has launched three members of the GPT-4.1 model -- GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano -- with a specific focus on coding capabilities. It's accessible via the OpenAI API but not ChatGPT. In the competition to develop advanced programming models, GPT-4.1 will rival AI models such as Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro, Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and DeepSeek's upgraded V3. OpenAI plans to sunset GPT-4, an AI model introduced more than two years ago, and replace it with GPT-4o, the current default model, per changelog. It will take effect on April 30. GPT-4 will remain available via OpenAI's API. OpenAI may launch several new AI models, including GPT-4.1, soon, The Verge reported, citing anonymous sources. GPT-4.1 would be an update of OpenAI's GPT-4o, which was released last year. On the list of upcoming models are GPT-4.1 and smaller versions like GPT-4.1 mini and nano, per the report. OpenAI started updating ChatGPT to enable the chatbot to remember previous conversations with a user and customize its responses based on that context. This feature is rolling out to ChatGPT Pro and Plus users first, excluding those in the U.K., EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. It looks like OpenAI is working on a watermarking feature for images generated using GPT-4o. AI researcher Tibor Blaho spotted a new "ImageGen" watermark feature in the new beta of ChatGPT's Android app. Blaho also found mentions of other tools: "Structured Thoughts," "Reasoning Recap," "CoT Search Tool," and "l1239dk1." OpenAI is offering its $20-per-month ChatGPT Plus subscription tier for free to all college students in the U.S. and Canada through the end of May. The offer will let millions of students use OpenAI's premium service, which offers access to the company's GPT-4o model, image generation, voice interaction, and research tools that are not available in the free version. More than 130 million users have created over 700 million images since ChatGPT got the upgraded image generator on March 25, according to COO of OpenAI Brad Lightcap. The image generator was made available to all ChatGPT users on March 31, and went viral for being able to create Ghibli-style photos. The Arc Prize Foundation, which develops the AI benchmark tool ARC-AGI, has updated the estimated computing costs for OpenAI's o3 "reasoning" model managed by ARC-AGI. The organization originally estimated that the best-performing configuration of o3 it tested, o3 high, would cost approximately $3,000 to address a single problem. The Foundation now thinks the cost could be much higher, possibly around $30,000 per task. In a series of posts on X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company's new image-generation tool's popularity may cause product releases to be delayed. "We are getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to break, and for service to sometimes be slow as we deal with capacity challenges," he wrote. OpeanAI intends to release its "first" open language model since GPT-2 "in the coming months." The company plans to host developer events to gather feedback and eventually showcase prototypes of the model. The first developer event is to be held in San Francisco, with sessions to follow in Europe and Asia. OpenAI made a notable change to its content moderation policies after the success of its new image generator in ChatGPT, which went viral for being able to create Studio Ghibli-style images. The company has updated its policies to allow ChatGPT to generate images of public figures, hateful symbols, and racial features when requested. OpenAI had previously declined such prompts due to the potential controversy or harm they may cause. However, the company has now "evolved" its approach, as stated in a blog post published by Joanne Jang, the lead for OpenAI's model behavior. OpenAI wants to incorporate Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) into all of its products, including the ChatGPT desktop app. MCP, an open-source standard, helps AI models generate more accurate and suitable responses to specific queries, and lets developers create bidirectional links between data sources and AI applications like chatbots. The protocol is currently available in the Agents SDK, and support for the ChatGPT desktop app and Responses API will be coming soon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said. The latest update of the image generator on OpenAI's ChatGPT has triggered a flood of AI-generated memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation studio behind blockbuster films like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Spirited Away." The burgeoning mass of Ghibli-esque images have sparked concerns about whether OpenAI has violated copyright laws, especially since the company is already facing legal action for using source material without authorization. OpenAI expects its revenue to triple to $12.7 billion in 2025, fueled by the performance of its paid AI software, Bloomberg reported, citing an anonymous source. While the startup doesn't expect to reach positive cash flow until 2029, it expects revenue to increase significantly in 2026 to surpass $29.4 billion, the report said. OpenAI on Tuesday rolled out a major upgrade to ChatGPT's image-generation capabilities: ChatGPT can now use the GPT-4o model to generate and edit images and photos directly. The feature went live earlier this week in ChatGPT and Sora, OpenAI's AI video-generation tool, for subscribers of the company's Pro plan, priced at $200 a month, and will be available soon to ChatGPT Plus subscribers and developers using the company's API service. The company's CEO Sam Altman said on Wednesday, however, that the release of the image generation feature to free users would be delayed due to higher demand than the company expected. Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's chief operating officer, will lead the company's global expansion and manage corporate partnerships as CEO Sam Altman shifts his focus to research and products, according to a blog post from OpenAI. Lightcap, who previously worked with Altman at Y Combinator, joined the Microsoft-backed startup in 2018. OpenAI also said Mark Chen would step into the expanded role of chief research officer, and Julia Villagra will take on the role of chief people officer. OpenAI has updated its AI voice assistant with improved chatting capabilities, according to a video posted on Monday (March 24) to the company's official media channels. The update enables real-time conversations, and the AI assistant is said to be more personable and interrupts users less often. Users on ChatGPT's free tier can now access the new version of Advanced Voice Mode, while paying users will receive answers that are "more direct, engaging, concise, specific, and creative," a spokesperson from OpenAI told TechCrunch. OpenAI and Meta have separately engaged in discussions with Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries regarding potential collaborations to enhance their AI services in the country, per a report by The Information. One key topic being discussed is Reliance Jio distributing OpenAI's ChatGPT. Reliance has proposed selling OpenAI's models to businesses in India through an application programming interface (API) so they can incorporate AI into their operations. Meta also plans to bolster its presence in India by constructing a large 3GW data center in Jamnagar, Gujarat. OpenAI, Meta, and Reliance have not yet officially announced these plans. Noyb, a privacy rights advocacy group, is supporting an individual in Norway who was shocked to discover that ChatGPT was providing false information about him, stating that he had been found guilty of killing two of his children and trying to harm the third. "The GDPR is clear. Personal data has to be accurate," said Joakim Söderberg, data protection lawyer at Noyb, in a statement. "If it's not, users have the right to have it changed to reflect the truth. Showing ChatGPT users a tiny disclaimer that the chatbot can make mistakes clearly isn't enough. You can't just spread false information and in the end add a small disclaimer saying that everything you said may just not be true." OpenAI has added new transcription and voice-generating AI models to its APIs: a text-to-speech model, "gpt-4o-mini-tts," that delivers more nuanced and realistic sounding speech, as well as two speech-to-text models called "gpt-4o-transcribe" and "gpt-4o-mini-transcribe". The company claims they are improved versions of what was already there and that they hallucinate less. OpenAI has introduced o1-pro in its developer API. OpenAI says its o1-pro uses more computing than its o1 "reasoning" AI model to deliver "consistently better responses." It's only accessible to select developers who have spent at least $5 on OpenAI API services. OpenAI charges $150 for every million tokens (about 750,000 words) input into the model and $600 for every million tokens the model produces. It costs twice as much as OpenAI's GPT-4.5 for input and 10 times the price of regular o1. Noam Brown, who heads AI reasoning research at OpenAI, thinks that certain types of AI models for "reasoning" could have been developed 20 years ago if researchers had understood the correct approach and algorithms. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, in a post on X, that the company has trained a "new model" that's "really good" at creative writing. He posted a lengthy sample from the model given the prompt "Please write a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief." OpenAI has not extensively explored the use of AI for writing fiction. The company has mostly concentrated on challenges in rigid, predictable areas such as math and programming. And it turns out that it might not be that great at creative writing at all. OpenAI rolled out new tools designed to help developers and businesses build AI agents -- automated systems that can independently accomplish tasks -- using the company's own AI models and frameworks. The tools are part of OpenAI's new Responses API, which enables enterprises to develop customized AI agents that can perform web searches, scan through company files, and navigate websites, similar to OpenAI's Operator product. The Responses API effectively replaces OpenAI's Assistants API, which the company plans to discontinue in the first half of 2026. OpenAI intends to release several "agent" products tailored for different applications, including sorting and ranking sales leads and software engineering, according to a report from The Information. One, a "high-income knowledge worker" agent, will reportedly be priced at $2,000 a month. Another, a software developer agent, is said to cost $10,000 a month. The most expensive rumored agents, which are said to be aimed at supporting "PhD-level research," are expected to cost $20,000 per month. The jaw-dropping figure is indicative of how much cash OpenAI needs right now: The company lost roughly $5 billion last year after paying for costs related to running its services and other expenses. It's unclear when these agentic tools might launch or which customers will be eligible to buy them. The latest version of the macOS ChatGPT app allows users to edit code directly in supported developer tools, including Xcode, VS Code, and JetBrains. ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team subscribers can use the feature now, and the company plans to roll it out to more users like Enterprise, Edu, and free users. According to a new report from VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), OpenAI's AI chatbot, ChatGPT, experienced solid growth in the second half of 2024. It took ChatGPT nine months to increase its weekly active users from 100 million in November 2023 to 200 million in August 2024, but it only took less than six months to double that number once more, according to the report. ChatGPT's weekly active users increased to 300 million by December 2024 and 400 million by February 2025. ChatGPT has experienced significant growth recently due to the launch of new models and features, such as GPT-4o, with multimodal capabilities. ChatGPT usage spiked from April to May 2024, shortly after that model's launch. OpenAI has effectively canceled the release of o3 in favor of what CEO Sam Altman is calling a "simplified" product offering. In a post on X, Altman said that, in the coming months, OpenAI will release a model called GPT-5 that "integrates a lot of [OpenAI's] technology," including o3, in ChatGPT and its API. As a result of that roadmap decision, OpenAI no longer plans to release o3 as a standalone model. A commonly cited stat is that ChatGPT requires around 3 watt-hours of power to answer a single question. Using OpenAI's latest default model for ChatGPT, GPT-4o, as a reference, nonprofit AI research institute Epoch AI found the average ChatGPT query consumes around 0.3 watt-hours. However, the analysis doesn't consider the additional energy costs incurred by ChatGPT with features like image generation or input processing. In response to pressure from rivals like DeepSeek, OpenAI is changing the way its o3-mini model communicates its step-by-step "thought" process. ChatGPT users will see an updated "chain of thought" that shows more of the model's "reasoning" steps and how it arrived at answers to questions. OpenAI is now allowing anyone to use ChatGPT web search without having to log in. While OpenAI had previously allowed users to ask ChatGPT questions without signing in, responses were restricted to the chatbot's last training update. This only applies through ChatGPT.com, however. To use ChatGPT in any form through the native mobile app, you will still need to be logged in. OpenAI announced a new AI "agent" called deep research that's designed to help people conduct in-depth, complex research using ChatGPT. OpenAI says the "agent" is intended for instances where you don't just want a quick answer or summary, but instead need to assiduously consider information from multiple websites and other sources. OpenAI used the subreddit r/ChangeMyView to measure the persuasive abilities of its AI reasoning models. OpenAI says it collects user posts from the subreddit and asks its AI models to write replies, in a closed environment, that would change the Reddit user's mind on a subject. The company then shows the responses to testers, who assess how persuasive the argument is, and finally OpenAI compares the AI models' responses to human replies for that same post. OpenAI launched a new AI "reasoning" model, o3-mini, the newest in the company's o family of models. OpenAI first previewed the model in December alongside a more capable system called o3. OpenAI is pitching its new model as both "powerful" and "affordable." A new report from app analytics firm Appfigures found that over half of ChatGPT's mobile users are under age 25, with users between ages 50 and 64 making up the second largest age demographic. The gender gap among ChatGPT users is even more significant. Appfigures estimates that across age groups, men make up 84.5% of all users. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Gov designed to provide U.S. government agencies an additional way to access the tech. ChatGPT Gov includes many of the capabilities found in OpenAI's corporate-focused tier, ChatGPT Enterprise. OpenAI says that ChatGPT Gov enables agencies to more easily manage their own security, privacy, and compliance, and could expedite internal authorization of OpenAI's tools for the handling of non-public sensitive data. Younger Gen Zers are embracing ChatGPT, for schoolwork, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. In a follow-up to its 2023 poll on ChatGPT usage among young people, Pew asked ~1,400 U.S.-based teens ages 13 to 17 whether they've used ChatGPT for homework or other school-related assignments. Twenty-six percent said that they had, double the number two years ago. Just over half of teens responding to the poll said they think it's acceptable to use ChatGPT for researching new subjects. But considering the ways ChatGPT can fall short, the results are possibly cause for alarm. OpenAI says that it might store chats and associated screenshots from customers who use Operator, the company's AI "agent" tool, for up to 90 days -- even after a user manually deletes them. While OpenAI has a similar deleted data retention policy for ChatGPT, the retention period for ChatGPT is only 30 days, which is 60 days shorter than Operator's. OpenAI is launching a research preview of Operator, a general-purpose AI agent that can take control of a web browser and independently perform certain actions. Operator promises to automate tasks such as booking travel accommodations, making restaurant reservations, and shopping online. Operator, OpenAI's agent tool, could be released sooner rather than later. Changes to ChatGPT's code base suggest that Operator will be available as an early research preview to users on the $200 Pro subscription plan. The changes aren't yet publicly visible, but a user on X who goes by Choi spotted these updates in ChatGPT's client-side code. TechCrunch separately identified the same references to Operator on OpenAI's website. OpenAI has begun testing a feature that lets new ChatGPT users sign up with only a phone number -- no email required. The feature is currently in beta in the U.S. and India. However, users who create an account using their number can't upgrade to one of OpenAI's paid plans without verifying their account via an email. Multi-factor authentication also isn't supported without a valid email. ChatGPT's new beta feature, called tasks, allows users to set simple reminders. For example, you can ask ChatGPT to remind you when your passport expires in six months, and the AI assistant will follow up with a push notification on whatever platform you have tasks enabled. The feature will start rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro users around the globe this week. OpenAI is introducing a new way for users to customize their interactions with ChatGPT. Some users found they can specify a preferred name or nickname and "traits" they'd like the chatbot to have. OpenAI suggests traits like "Chatty," "Encouraging," and "Gen Z." However, some users reported that the new options have disappeared, so it's possible they went live prematurely. ChatGPT is a general-purpose chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to generate text after a user enters a prompt, developed by tech startup OpenAI. The chatbot uses GPT-4, a large language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. November 30, 2022 is when ChatGPT was released for public use. Both the free version of ChatGPT and the paid ChatGPT Plus are regularly updated with new GPT models. The most recent model is GPT-4o. There is a free version of ChatGPT that only requires a sign-in in addition to the paid version, ChatGPT Plus. Anyone can use ChatGPT! More and more tech companies and search engines are utilizing the chatbot to automate text or quickly answer user questions/concerns. Multiple enterprises utilize ChatGPT, although others may limit the use of the AI-powered tool. Most recently, Microsoft announced at its 2023 Build conference that it is integrating its ChatGPT-based Bing experience into Windows 11. A Brooklyn-based 3D display startup Looking Glass utilizes ChatGPT to produce holograms you can communicate with by using ChatGPT. And nonprofit organization Solana officially integrated the chatbot into its network with a ChatGPT plug-in geared toward end users to help onboard into the web3 space. GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. A chatbot can be any software/system that holds dialogue with you/a person but doesn't necessarily have to be AI-powered. For example, there are chatbots that are rules-based in the sense that they'll give canned responses to questions. ChatGPT is AI-powered and utilizes LLM technology to generate text after a prompt. Yes. Due to the nature of how these models work, they don't know or care whether something is true, only that it looks true. That's a problem when you're using it to do your homework, sure, but when it accuses you of a crime you didn't commit, that may well at this point be libel. We will see how handling troubling statements produced by ChatGPT will play out over the next few months as tech and legal experts attempt to tackle the fastest moving target in the industry. Yes, there is a free ChatGPT mobile app for iOS and Android users. It's not documented anywhere that ChatGPT has a character limit. However, users have noted that there are some character limitations after around 500 words. Yes, it was released March 1, 2023. Everyday examples include programming, scripts, email replies, listicles, blog ideas, summarization, etc. Advanced use examples include debugging code, programming languages, scientific concepts, complex problem solving, etc. It depends on the nature of the program. While ChatGPT can write workable Python code, it can't necessarily program an entire app's worth of code. That's because ChatGPT lacks context awareness -- in other words, the generated code isn't always appropriate for the specific context in which it's being used. Yes. OpenAI allows users to save chats in the ChatGPT interface, stored in the sidebar of the screen. There are no built-in sharing features yet. Yes. There are multiple AI-powered chatbot competitors such as Together, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude, and developers are creating open source alternatives. OpenAI has said that individuals in "certain jurisdictions" (such as the EU) can object to the processing of their personal information by its AI models by filling out this form. This includes the ability to make requests for deletion of AI-generated references about you. Although OpenAI notes it may not grant every request since it must balance privacy requests against freedom of expression "in accordance with applicable laws". The web form for making a deletion of data about you request is entitled "OpenAI Personal Data Removal Request". In its privacy policy, the ChatGPT maker makes a passing acknowledgement of the objection requirements attached to relying on "legitimate interest" (LI), pointing users towards more information about requesting an opt out -- when it writes: "See here for instructions on how you can opt out of our use of your information to train our models." Recently, Discord announced that it had integrated OpenAI's technology into its bot named Clyde where two users tricked Clyde into providing them with instructions for making the illegal drug methamphetamine (meth) and the incendiary mixture napalm. An Australian mayor has publicly announced he may sue OpenAI for defamation due to ChatGPT's false claims that he had served time in prison for bribery. This would be the first defamation lawsuit against the text-generating service. CNET found itself in the midst of controversy after Futurism reported the publication was publishing articles under a mysterious byline completely generated by AI. The private equity company that owns CNET, Red Ventures, was accused of using ChatGPT for SEO farming, even if the information was incorrect. Several major school systems and colleges, including New York City Public Schools, have banned ChatGPT from their networks and devices. They claim that the AI impedes the learning process by promoting plagiarism and misinformation, a claim that not every educator agrees with. There have also been cases of ChatGPT accusing individuals of false crimes. No. But OpenAI recently disclosed a bug, since fixed, that exposed the titles of some users' conversations to other people on the service. None specifically targeting ChatGPT. But OpenAI is involved in at least one lawsuit that has implications for AI systems trained on publicly available data, which would touch on ChatGPT. Yes. Text-generating AI models like ChatGPT have a tendency to regurgitate content from their training data.

What Is ChatGPT? Everything You Need to Know About the AI Chatbot

Barbara is a tech writer specializing in AI and emerging technologies. With a background as a systems librarian in software development, she brings a unique perspective to her reporting. Having lived in the USA and Ireland, Barbara now resides in Croatia. She covers the latest in artificial intelligence and tech innovations. Her work draws on years of experience in tech and other fields, blending technical know-how with a passion for how technology shapes our world. ChatGPT is the artificial intelligence chatbot that started the whole generative AI revolution. It's a multimodal tool that can perform a range of functions, from answering complex questions -- and simplifying the answers for you, as if you're 5 years old -- to coding software, creating images and videos and even engaging in casual conversations. Launched in November 2022 by OpenAI, the company co-founded by Sam Altman, ChatGPT quickly became the most popular AI application ever released, and the one everyone tried to emulate and one-up. Since then, all the big tech players have joined the generative AI race. Perplexity, Meta AI, Google's Gemini, Microsoft's Copilot and Anthropic's Claude can all do similar things. But ChatGPT's popularity, open-ended capabilities and early start gave it a strong lead. ChatGPT became one of the fastest-growing apps in history, amassing hundreds of millions of users. ChatGPT often stands out because of its versatility and ease of use but mostly from the sheer scale of its user base. Let's dive deeper into how ChatGPT works, how to use it and why it has become the talk of the town in the past few years -- and some of its more controversial points. ChatGPT is built on a transformer architecture, specifically the GPT (generative pretrained transformer) family of models, ergo the name ChatGPT. It was trained on massive amounts of data from books and the internet -- websites, Wikipedia, Reddit threads, news sites and much, much more. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Like other AI chatbots, it uses deep learning algorithms to understand context and predicts the most likely next word in a sentence based on patterns it's seen before. That's one reason why it sometimes "hallucinates" or generates confident-sounding but incorrect information. ChatGPT relies on large language models (LLMs), enabling it to understand your questions and provide human-like responses. Sometimes it does it so convincingly and naturally, you might forget it's not actually thinking. And this boundary is being pushed further all the time. Its latest model, GPT-4.5, currently available to Plus and above tiers in a research preview, shows greater emotional intelligence and supposedly hallucinates less. Equal parts impressive and unsettling, several LLMs have recently passed the Turing Test, where a human evaluator talks to a machine and a human, and if the evaluator cannot distinguish between them, the machine passes. GPT-4.5 was judged to be the human 73% of the time. Afraz Jaffri, a senior director analyst at Gartner, argues these results don't matter as much, though. "You can create systems that can fool people into thinking that this thing that you're talking to is human," Jaffri tells CNET. "It understands what they're saying but actually doesn't understand what it's saying. So it's really a test of human gullibility rather than a test of intelligence." When I asked Jaffri what he thinks is ChatGPT's biggest flaw, he said, "They're just unreliable. So even if I ask something and I get a response, I still want to check that that is actually true, which kind of defeats the point of us getting it in the first place." However, OpenAI has been quick to act on user feedback. Just days ago, it announced on X a new feature that improves citations by highlighting the relevant text and showing which part each citation refers to. It also rolled GPT-4o back to its prior version after users on X complained that its "sycophantic" praise felt unsettling and distressing. Sycophancy is the fake flattery of someone in power, often used to gain something from them. OpenAI says it's working on a more balanced approach going forward. You can easily access ChatGPT through a web browser or via its apps on Android and iOS devices. It has also been integrated into educational apps, customer service bots and even Apple products via Apple Intelligence and Siri. Additionally, OpenAI introduced the ability to interact via phone calls through the 1-800-CHATGPT service, simplifying use for those who prefer voice interaction over typing. There are many use cases for ChatGPT -- to name a few, it can plan your vacations, practice job interview questions with you, help you with your budgeting, write your resume, do your meal planning, draft emails, summarize long documents, create business strategies -- or just have a conversation with you. It'll learn from your inquiries and requests, and tailor itself to what it thinks you like. If you don't want it to remember you, you can also use a temporary chat by selecting it in the top right corner. It won't appear in history, update its memory or be used to train models, although it may be kept for up to 30 days for safety. ChatGPT Canvas can help you write and code, and with the Tasks feature, you can set up reminders and schedule tasks. It can draft marketing copy and even assist you with self-diagnosis, although you should always be cautious of the results and consult your doctor. It's also one of the most customizable chatbots. You can create your own GPT tailored to specific tasks or personalities, or select among the thousands of user-created ones. They are organized into categories like education, productivity, trending and programming, etc. Beyond text, ChatGPT can generate original images and videos through its integrated tools. GPT-4o's image generator is now the default in ChatGPT for all users, offering you the ability to generate highly realistic images from simple text prompts. If you prefer to keep using Dall-E 3 (its first image generator), you can still access it through the Dall-E GPT. All ChatGPT users on the web and iOS/Android now have a Library where images are automatically saved, letting you revisit, reuse or edit them without digging through old chats. You can access it from the left-hand sidebar. Additionally, OpenAI has introduced Sora, its text-to-video-generation model, to Plus and Pro plans, expanding ChatGPT's multimedia capabilities. Originally based on OpenAI's GPT-3 architecture, ChatGPT has evolved. There are different model variations and limitations based on your subscription and your purpose for using ChatGPT. GPT-4o is the most advanced version accessible to everyone, handling text, images and audio as input and output. GPT-4o Mini, the fastest model, is optimized for everyday tasks and available to all users (free-tier users are automatically switched to it when hitting use limits on GPT-4o). Models o3 and o4-mini are reasoning models, where o3 is especially strong in coding, math and visual tasks, while o4-mini is a lighter and cost-efficient version. o4-mini-high is best for coding and visual perception. Models o1 and o1-mini are designed to "think" longer before responding and are ideal for solving complex problems. Last, as mentioned earlier, GPT-4.5 is the largest and best model for chat and it's available in research preview for all paid and ChatGPT Edu plans for students. If you are on any paid plan, you can change the model before or during a chat by clicking the model selector in the top-left corner of the screen. OpenAI provides ChatGPT on a freemium model. The free version offers basic access to GPT-4o Mini and limited access to GPT-4o, o4-mini and deep research. Upgrading to a paid plan unlocks additional features. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 a month and provides access to Sora, deep research and multiple reasoning models (o3, o4-mini and o4-mini-high), faster response times, limited access to GPT-4.5 and additional features such as voice interaction. For teams, there's ChatGPT Team starting at $25 per user per month. For heavy users, ChatGPT Pro is available for $200 a month with the highest limits and capabilities. Businesses can also choose ChatGPT Enterprise with custom pricing for enterprise-level features. Students and nonprofits occasionally get special offers. For example, ChatGPT Plus access is often free for students in the US and Canada during exam periods. ChatGPT faces ongoing legal challenges related to industry concerns regarding the ethics and the legality of data sourcing for AI training. High-profile lawsuits include those from major publishers like The New York Times, Dow Jones and CNET's parent company Ziff Davis (see disclosure above), which allege unauthorized use of their content for training ChatGPT, as do many individual authors. Let's not forget when OpenAI's "Sky" voice model mimicked Scarlett Johansson without permission, prompting her team to threaten legal action over the unauthorized use of her voice. OpenAI removed the voice, said it came from a different actress and promised clearer AI-likeness disclosures. Privacy is another concern. Experts and privacy advocates have raised ongoing questions about data protection, how personal information is stored and used, and what users should or shouldn't share. Even OpenAI advises against entering sensitive information like credit card numbers, medical history or Social Security numbers. Jaffri emphasized that malicious or careless deployment, not the models themselves, is the root of most risks. "Now anyone can create these things and you can spread them a lot easier and a lot quicker, so that's the kind of worry," he told CNET. "It's more about how it's used rather than it itself being something to worry about." OpenAI has attempted to address these issues with enhanced data protection measures. Your prompts (on Free, Plus and Pro plans) may be used to train the model unless you opt out in settings. Team and Enterprise plans are designed not to collect user data by default. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on potential copyright and plagiarism concerns about training data or on user privacy and data protection. Since its beginning, ChatGPT has grown in features and capabilities. OpenAI expanded ChatGPT's memory feature, allowing the chatbot to recall previous interactions (which you can manage or delete), creating a more personalized user experience. Recently, OpenAI made ChatGPT's image generation capabilities free for all users, albeit with a limited number of monthly uses. Furthermore, in response to competition from rivals like Chinese AI company DeepSeek R1, OpenAI rolled out trials for its newest lightweight model and deep research, accessible even to free-tier users (with limited access). ChatGPT is becoming a default interface for how people interact with AI and even how they get information from the internet. Through its ChatGPT Search feature, it is competing more directly with Google search (even removing mandatory login requirements to make it that much easier for casual users). ChatGPT remains an influential player in AI. As generative AI tools become more embedded in daily life, ongoing enhancements in usability, privacy protection and content generation capabilities will determine ChatGPT's long-term success. "The whole kind of technology itself is going to be transformative for a lot of different areas, which will have a direct impact on our lives," Jaffri says. "Hopefully for the better."

Generative AI: Everything to Know About the Tech Behind Chatbots Like ChatGPT

Whether you realize it or not, artificial intelligence is everywhere. It sits behind the chatbots you talk to online, the playlists you stream and the personalized ads showing up in your scrolling. And now it's taking on a more public persona. Think Meta AI, which is now embedded in apps like Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp; or Google's Gemini, working in the background across the company's platforms; or Apple Intelligence, rolling out across iPhones now. AI has a long history, going back to a conference at Dartmouth in 1956 that first discussed artificial intelligence as a thing. Milestones along the way include ELIZA, essentially the first chatbot, developed in 1964 by MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, and -- skipping ahead 40 years -- when Google's autocomplete feature first appeared in 2004. Then came 2022 and ChatGPT's rise to fame. Generative AI developments and product launches have accelerated rapidly since then, including Google Bard (now Gemini), Microsoft Copilot, IBM Watsonx.ai and Meta's open-source Llama models. Let's break down what generative AI is, how it differs from "regular" artificial intelligence and whether gen AI can live up to the hype. At its core, generative AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that are designed to produce new content based on patterns and data they've learned. Instead of just analyzing numbers or predicting trends, these systems generate creative outputs like text, images music, videos and software code. Some of the most popular generative AI tools on the market include: Foremost among its abilities, ChatGPT can craft human-like conversations or essays based on a few simple prompts. Dall-E and Midjourney create detailed artwork from a short description, while Adobe Firefly focuses on image editing and design. Not all AI is generative. While gen AI focuses on creating new content, traditional AI excels at analyzing data and making predictions. This includes technologies like image recognition and predictive text. It is also used for novel solutions in: The AI that beat human grand champions at chess and the board game Go was not generative AI. These systems might not be as flashy as gen AI, but classic artificial intelligence is a huge part of the technology we rely on every day. Behind the magic of generative AI are large language models and advanced machine learning techniques. These systems are trained on massive amounts of data, such as entire libraries of books, millions of images, years of recorded music and data scraped from the internet. AI developers, from tech giants to startups, are well aware that AI is only as good as the data you feed it. If it's fed poor-quality data, AI can produce biased results. It's something that even the biggest players in the field, like Google, haven't been immune to. The AI learns patterns, relationships and structures within this data during training. Then, when prompted, it applies that knowledge to generate something new. For instance, if you ask a gen AI tool to write a poem about the ocean, it's not just pulling prewritten verses from a database. Instead, it's using what it learned about poetry, oceans and language structure to create a completely original piece. It's impressive, but it's not perfect. Sometimes the results can feel a little off. Maybe the AI misunderstands your request, or it gets overly creative in ways you didn't expect. It might confidently provide completely false information, and it's up to you to fact-check it. Those quirks, often called hallucinations, are part of what makes generative AI both fascinating and frustrating. Generative AI's capabilities are growing. It can now understand multiple data types by combining technologies like machine learning, natural language processing and computer vision. The result is called multimodal AI that can integrate some combination of text, images, video and speech within a single framework, offering more contextually relevant and accurate responses. ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode is an example, as is Google's Project Astra. There's no shortage of generative AI tools out there, each with its unique flair. These tools have sparked creativity, but they've also raised many questions besides bias and hallucinations -- like, who owns the rights to AI-generated content? Or what material is fair game or off-limits for AI companies to use for training their language models -- see, for instance, the The New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. Other concerns -- no small matters -- involve privacy, accountability in AI, AI-generated deepfakes and job displacement. "Writing, animation, photography, illustration, graphic design -- AI tools can now handle all of that with surprising ease. But that doesn't mean these roles will disappear. It may simply mean creatives will need to upskill and use these tools to amplify their own work," Fang Liu, professor at the University of Notre Dame and co-editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Probabilistic Machine Learning, told CNET. "It also offers a way for people who maybe lack the skill, like someone with a clear vision who can't draw, but can describe it through a prompt. So no, I don't think it will disrupt the creative industry. Hopefully, it will be co-creation or augmentation, not replacement." Another issue is the impact on the environment because training large AI models uses a lot of energy, leading to big carbon footprints.The rapid ascent of gen AI in the last couple of years has accelerated worries about the risks of AI in general. Governments are ramping up AI regulations to ensure responsible and ethical development, most notably the European Union's AI Act. Many people have interacted with chatbots in customer service or used virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant -- which now are on the cusp of becoming gen AI power tools. That, along with apps for ChatGPT, Claude and other new tools, is putting AI in your hands. And public reaction to generative AI has been mixed. Many users enjoy the convenience and creativity it offers, especially for things like writing help, image creation, homework support and productivity. Meanwhile, according to McKinsey's 2024 Global AI Survey, 65% of respondents said their organizations regularly use generative AI, nearly double the figure reported just 10 months earlier. Industries like health care and finance are using gen AI to streamline business operations and automate mundane tasks. As mentioned, there are obvious concerns about ethics, transparency, job losses and the potential for misuse of personal data. Those are the top criticisms behind resistance to accepting generative AI. But those who use generative AI tools will also experience the final output results still not being good enough a lot of the time. Despite technological advancements, most people can recognize if the content is created using gen AI, whether articles, images or music. AI has hijacked certain phrases I have always used, so I must self-correct my writing often because it might sound like AI. Many articles written by AI contain phrases like "In the era of..." or everything is a "testament to" or a "tapestry of." AI lacks the emotion and experience that comes with, well, being a human and living life. As one artist on Quora explained, "What AI makes is not the same as art evolving from a thought in a human brain, and is not created from the passion found in a human heart." Generative AI isn't just for techies or creative people. Once you get the knack of giving it prompts, it has the potential to do a lot of the legwork for you in a variety of daily tasks. Let's say you're planning a trip. Instead of scrolling through pages of search results, you ask a chatbot to plan your itinerary. Within seconds, you have a detailed plan tailored to your preferences. (That's the ideal. Please always fact-check its recommendations.) A small business owner who needs a marketing campaign but doesn't have a design team can use generative AI to create eye-catching visuals and even ask it to suggest ad copy. There hasn't been a tech advancement that's caused such a boom since the internet and, later, the iPhone. Despite its challenges, generative AI is undeniably transformative. It's making creativity more accessible, helping businesses streamline workflows and even inspiring entirely new ways of thinking and solving problems. But perhaps what's most exciting is its potential, and we're just scratching the surface of what these tools can do. ChatGPT is probably the most popular example of generative AI. You give it a prompt and it can generate text, images, write code, answer questions, summarize text, draft emails and much more. The difference is that generative AI creates new content like text, images or music, while traditional AI is better at analyzing data, recognizing patterns or images and making predictions (e.g., in medicine, science and finance).