ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, launched in November 2022 to massive success and interest from users curious about the technology. The release sparked a widespread conversation about AI and its implementation in everyday life for the first time at that scale, and it resulted in download numbers spiking for its iOS app even in limited markets.
The release of ChatGPT set off an AI funding boom for startups, as well as accelerated a competitive AI race for Big Tech, with Meta, Google, Microsoft and more all fighting for the top spot in a fast-moving field.
Below are updates and analysis following the initial launch of ChatGPT. If you want to read about more recent updates, check out our timelines from 2023 and 2024.
December
There’s now an open-source alternative to ChatGPT, but good luck running it
The first open-source equivalent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has arrived. Developer Philip Wang released PaLM + RLHF, a text-generating model that behaves similarly to ChatGPT. The system combines PaLM, a large language model from Google, and a technique called Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback to create a system that can accomplish pretty much any task that ChatGPT can. But good luck running it on your laptop — or at all.
Quora launches Poe, a way to talk to AI chatbots like ChatGPT
Quora has launched a platform that lets people ask questions, get instant answers and have a back-and-forth dialogue with AI chatbots. Short for “Platform for Open Exploration,” Poe is “designed to be a place where people can easily interact with a number of different AI agents,” according to a Quora spokesperson.
OpenAI’s attempts to watermark AI text hit limits
Did a human write that or ChatGPT? It can be hard to tell — perhaps too hard, OpenAI thinks. Which is why the company is working on a tool for “statistically watermarking the outputs of a text [AI system].”
ShareGPT lets you easily share your ChatGPT conversations
A week after ChatGPT was released into the wild, two developers — Steven Tey and Dom Eccleston — made a Chrome extension called ShareGPT to make it easier to capture and share the AI’s answers with the world.
November
ChatGPT first launched to the public as OpenAI quietly released GPT-3.5
GPT-3.5 broke cover with ChatGPT, a fine-tuned version of GPT-3.5 that’s essentially a general-purpose chatbot. ChatGPT can engage with a range of topics, including programming, TV scripts and scientific concepts. Writers everywhere rolled their eyes at the new technology, much like artists did with OpenAI’s DALL-E model, but the latest chat-style iteration seemingly broadened its appeal and audience. Here’s TechCrunch’s Alex Wilhelm’s experimental test with the ChatGPT model following its launch.
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