ChatGPT has approached one billion weekly active users. The growth coincided with the March update to its image generation feature, which sparked a surge in interest in the AI service. Last month, ChatGPT became the world’s most downloaded app outside of games, with 46 million total installs.
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During a talk onstage at TED, event curator Chris Anderson asked Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, about ChatGPT’s user count. Altman responded that the last figure given was 500 million weekly active users, adding that the audience was growing rapidly. Anderson noted that Altman had privately mentioned doubling in a matter of weeks. Altman did not deny this.
Altman also said that OpenAI is used by about 10% of the world’s population. With over 8 billion people living on Earth today, that’s about 800 million users. After launching a free research version of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, based on the GPT-3.5 AI model, it reached 100 million users in just two months, becoming the most popular app in history. For comparison, it took TikTok nine months and Instagram
two and a half years.
By August 2024, ChatGPT had reached 200 million weekly active users. The subsequent surge was fueled by a March 25 update that improved its image generation capabilities. Afterward, social media was flooded with images and videos in a variety of artistic styles, with the most popular being that of Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli. Altman noted that demand was so high that it was melting the company’s GPUs. The good news for OpenAI was that the update brought in a million new ChatGPT users in just one hour.
According to analytics platform Appfigures, ChatGPT became the most downloaded non-gaming app in the world in March. The number of installations increased by 28% compared to February and reached 46 million. The explosive success was facilitated not only by the improvement of the image generator, but also, probably, by the removal of some restrictions in the service.
Image source: TED
As generative AI gains popularity, concerns about its impact on the labor market are growing. More and more companies are laying off staff as tasks once performed by humans are now being taken over by AI systems. When asked whether AI will replace humans, Altman said, “You can say, ‘Oh, my God, it does everything I do. What’s going to happen to me?’ Or you can say, like every other technology revolution in history, ‘Okay, now there’s a new tool. I can do so much more. What can I do?’ Certainly the expectations of a person in a certain role are higher, but the opportunities are expanding so dramatically that I think it’s possible to meet those expectations.”