In the ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, ChatGPT stands out as a groundbreaking development that has captured global attention. From its impressive capabilities and recent advancements to the heated debates surrounding its ethical implications, ChatGPT continues to make headlines.
Whether you're a tech enthusiast or just curious about the future of AI, dive into this comprehensive guide to uncover everything you need to know about this revolutionary AI tool.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT (which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is an AI chatbot, meaning you can ask it a question using natural language prompts and it will generate a reply. Unlike less-sophisticated voice assistant like Siri or Google Assistant, ChatGPT is driven by a large language model (LLM). These neural networks are trained on huge quantities of information from the internet for deep learning — meaning they generate altogether new responses, rather than just regurgitating canned answers. They're not built for a specific purpose like chatbots of the past — and they're a whole lot smarter. The current version of ChatGPT is based on the GPT-4 model, which was trained on all sorts of written content including websites, books, social media, news articles, and more — all fine-tuned in the language model by both supervised learning and RLHF (Reinforcement Learning From Human Feedback).
When was ChatGPT released?
OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022. When it launched, the initial version of ChatGPT ran atop the GPT-3.5 model. In the years since, the system has undergone a number of iterative advancements with the current version of ChatGPT using the GPT-4 model family. GPT-5 is reportedly just around the corner. GPT-3 was first launched in 2020, GPT-2 released the year prior to that, though neither were used in the public-facing ChatGPT system.
Upon its release, ChatGPT's popularity skyrocketed literally overnight. It grew to host over 100 million users in its first two months, making it the most quickly-adopted piece of software ever made to date, though this record has since been beaten by the Twitter alternative, Threads. ChatGPT's popularity dropped briefly in June 2023, reportedly losing 10% of global users, but has since continued to grow exponentially.
How to use ChatGPT
First, go to chatgpt.com. If you'd like to maintain a history of your previous chats, sign up for a free account. You can use the system anonymously without a login if you prefer. Users can opt to connect their ChatGPT login with that of their Google-, Microsoft- or Apple-backed accounts as well. At the sign up screen, you'll see some basic rules about ChatGPT, including potential errors in data, how OpenAI collects data, and how users can submit feedback. If you want to get started, we have a roundup of the best ChatGPT tips.
