ChatGPT is one year old. Here’s how it changed the tech world.

A timeline of ChatGPT-related events

Since ChatGPT's launch last year, a lot has happened in OpenAI, governments, and the legal system, as well as with competitors. Here's a brief timeline of events related to ChatGPT's release and its impact. There have been far too many events to list all of them comprehensively here, so we're presenting an incomplete, broad overview of historically important moments.

• 06/11/2018 - OpenAI announces GPT, the first of its GPT series of language models.
• 02/14/2019 - OpenAI launches GPT-2, a more capable follow-up to GPT.
• 05/28/2020 - OpenAI announces GPT-3, its most powerful language model to date.
• 11/30/2022 - ChatGPT launches publicly as a free research project, using GPT-3.5.
• 12/05/2022 - Six days after launch, Sam Altman announces that ChatGPT has reached 1 million users.
• 01/20/2023 - NYT reports that Google begins to double down on generative AI projects, spooked by ChatGPT.
• 01/23/2023 - Microsoft and OpenAI extend their partnership to the tune of US $10 billion.
• 02/01/2023 - OpenAI launches ChatGPT Plus, a $20/month subscription service.
• 02/01/2023 - ChatGPT becomes the fastest growing consumer application of all time, reaching 100 million monthly users.
• 02/07/2023 - Microsoft launches an early version of Bing Chat, a conversational bot secretly based on GPT-4.
• 02/24/2023 - Meta releases LLaMA, a research LLM that spawns an open source ChatGPT clone movement.
• 02/27/2023 - Snapchat announces My AI conversational chatbot, based on technology from OpenAI.
• 03/01/2023 - The ChatGPT API debuts, allowing developers to integrate the chatbot into their apps.
• 03/14/2023 - The GPT-4 language model launches and comes to ChatGPT for the first time.
• 03/14/2023 - Anthropic launches an early access version of Claude Instant, its ChatGPT competitor.
• 03/21/2023 - Google launches a limited preview of Google Bard, its answer to ChatGPT.
• 03/21/2023 - Brian Hood tells OpenAI he plans to sue for defamation due to false generations from ChatGPT. The issue is later settled out of court.
• 03/22/2023 - The Future of Life Institute calls for a six-month pause in AI development in response to GPT-4.
• 03/23/2023 - OpenAI announces ChatGPT Plugins, which allow the bot to tie into different external functions.
• 04/25/2023 - OpenAI introduces ChatGPT privacy features, such as disabling chat history.
• 05/10/2023 - Google Bard chatbot launches to all users in the US.
• 05/16/2023 - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifies about the dangers of AI at a US Senate hearing.
• 05/18/2023 - OpenAI releases the ChatGPT app for iOS.
• 05/24/2023 - Lawyer Steven Schwartz apologizes to judge for citing six fake legal cases confabulated by ChatGPT.
• 07/11/2023 - Anthropic launches Claude 2, an AI assistant with a ChatGPT-like interface.
• 07/19/2023 - Bloomberg reports that Apple has developed its own internal chatbot, Ajax.
• 07/20/2023 - The Custom Instructions feature allows users to set a persistent ChatGPT personality between sessions.
• 07/26/2023 - OpenAI releases the ChatGPT app for Android.
• 08/28/2023 - OpenAI launches ChatGPT Enterprise, aimed at businesses.
• 09/20/2023 - AI image generator DALL-E 3 comes to ChatGPT in wide release.
• 09/25/2023 - ChatGPT goes multimodal with the ability to interpret images and converse with voice synthesis.
• 11/06/2023 - GPT-4 Turbo comes to ChatGPT, pushing its knowledge cutoff from September 2021 to April 2023.
• 11/06/2023 - OpenAI introduces GPTs, which are roles ChatGPT can play using custom prompts and API interfaces.
• 11/15/2023 - Microsoft calls itself "the Copilot company" after its reorientation around AI tech from OpenAI.
• 11/17/2023 - OpenAI's board fires Sam Altman in a surprise move. He officially returns as CEO on November 29, 2023.
• 11/28/2023 - Amazon announces Amazon Q, its enterprise-focused ChatGPT competitor.

How do you use ChatGPT?

With all that said, we'd like to hear from our readers: How do you use ChatGPT? Is it useful for you? How has it impacted your life, good or bad, and how do you feel about it?

One of the best things about Internet comment sections is that they can serve as time capsules of public opinion if they are properly preserved over time, so the opinions you share may help future historians make sense of ChatGPT's impact beyond our own limited interpretation.

What's clear is that the story of ChatGPT is not over. Just last night, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted, "a year ago tonight we were probably just sitting around the office putting the finishing touches on chatgpt before the next morning’s launch. what a year it’s been…" Considering all that has happened in 365 days, it's difficult to imagine where we'll be with AI—and ChatGPT—one year from now.