ChatGPT Launch

2022

Date: 30 November 2022 · Place: OpenAI, San Francisco · Figures: Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO · Mira Murati, OpenAI CTO · GPT-3.5 base model · Tags: AI, Launch, Substrate 01. Wednesday Afternoon Release OpenAI releases ChatGPT on the afternoon of 30 November 2022 as a research preview. Sam Altman tweets a casual announcement at 11:31 a.m. Pacific. The product is a chat wrapper around GPT-3.5, a model OpenAI has had internally for months. The team expects a quiet research release. The product hits one million users in five days, faster than Instagram and TikTok's growth curves. By January 2023 it is the fastest-growing consumer product in history with 100 million weekly users. 02. The Substrate Switches Memes change after 30 November. The 'Make it more X' escalation format, the AI Drake voice clones, Pope Francis in Balenciaga, the Studio Ghibli filter, the Will Smith spaghetti benchmark all descend from this release. AI ceases to be a 2010s research curiosity and becomes the substrate of every subsequent meme cycle. The Italian Brainrot characters of 2025, the voice clones of 2024, the image and video synthesis cycles of 2023 and 2024 all originate in the model OpenAI ships this Wednesday. Sources • OpenAI, 'Introducing ChatGPT' (30 November 2022) • Reuters, 'ChatGPT Sets Record for Fastest-Growing User Base' (2 February 2023) • The New York Times, 'Inside the Race that Doomed OpenAI's Calm' (15 December 2022)