THE METEORIC RISE AND MONETIZATION OF CHATGPT
ChatGPT is still the buzzword on everyone’s lips – all you have to do is login to LinkedIn to see the number of companies and professionals putting the app to the test and posting their surprising results – some surprisingly accurate and some way off the mark. With some of the results, it’s hard to believe that a human wasn’t on the other side of the content creation, in others, a distinct lack of emotional quotient separated the AI from the actual humans. Based on this it is entirely unsurprising that ChatCPT is well on its way to being the fastest growing pp to date by gaining over 100 million monthly active users, otherwise known as MAUs, after just a mere two months post its public release. MAUs are a big key performance indicator of the popularity of an App.
The closest app to come close, according to UBS is TikTok, which took almost 10 months to get to the same MAU milestone. According to statistics from SimilarWeb, which is a tool that is used to estimate how much web traffic websites get, it took Instagram two and a half years to get to 100 million MAUs and for Spotify, it took nearly double that amount of time to achieve the same number of monthly active users. According to UBS analysts, they “cannot remember an app scaling at this pace. In twenty years following the Internet space, we cannot recall a faster ramp in a consumer internet app.”
The chatbot app was released to the public in November of 2022, and gained a significant following and usership within its first five days due to its uncanny ability to perform ‘human-like’ word based functions like writing exams, tests, cover letters, company descriptions – you name it and ChatGPT can do it (how well consistently though, is the question). So, while OpenAI is happy with its monthly usage, the company is now looking for ways to monetize the AI chatbot. Since Microsoft’s investment in the company, it has become even more imperative to secure its long-term applicability and lifespan as well as Its initial return on investment. Greg Brockman, President, and Co-Founder, OpenAI has confirmed that they are currently working on a professional version of the platform which will look to enhance its usability as well as some of its key features such as having “higher limits and a faster performance.” This paid for professional version will not be rolled out to all users initially but will be piloted to a selected user audience first at around $20 a month.