ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot

ChatGPT

It is an AI chatbot that has recently been created. It was developed in November 2022 and has created a huge excitement in people since it emerged. It will make easy and quicker essay writing or even code-writing with only one simple text prompt. Above 92% of Fortune 500 companies are using it today.

Such rapid growth has made OpenAI one of the most buzzed-about companies in the tech sphere today. Just not too long ago, Apple joined them in its new AI tool, Apple Intelligence, making it all the more powerful in this race for the forefront of AI development.

In 2024, OpenAI launched GPT-4o, supposedly their new model for ChatGPT. GPT-4o is free and also voice and vision; however, after people accused one of OpenAI’s voices, Sky, of sounding too much like Scarlett Johansson from the movie Her, it pulled that one off.

However, OpenAI has had a few issues in spite of all this success. One of its co-founders and lead scientist, Ilya Sutskever quit, and they shut down a special unit called Superalignment. Additionally, OpenAI is currently on the wrong side of the law because Alden Global Capital, that corporation owns newspapers New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune, is suing OpenAI over copyrights. It follows another lawsuit last year from The New York Times.

For more information about the updates and features of ChatGPT, read our timeline. For more in other questions you may have, please visit our section about ChatGPT FAQ.

Table of Contents

September 2024

Introducing OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode

OpenAI has now launched Advanced Voice Mode, or AVM, to more paying users of ChatGPT. Gone are the black dots and replaced by a blue animated sphere that symbolizes this look. It promises faster conversations, better accents in foreign languages, and five new voices!

YouTuber Connects ChatGPT to a Graphing Calculator

A YouTuber named ChromaLock showed how to use a TI-84 graphing calculator to access ChatGPT online. He calls it the “ultimate cheating device.” While it’s a complicated process that most high school students might find hard, it raises concerns for teachers about cheating in schools.

OpenAI reveals OpenAI o1.

OpenAI has just rolled out another variant called OpenAI o1, or “Strawberry.” The latter lives within ChatGPT but serves to check facts and reason with more profound mathematical and scientific understanding.

It cannot browse the web nor scan files, and it costs more than the others. OpenAI plans to let all free ChatGPT users access the smaller version, o1-mini, but hasn’t set a release date.

Hacker Tricks ChatGPT into Giving Bomb-Making Instructions

A hacker was able to manipulate ChatGPT to provide instructions for making bombs, which the chatbot usually does not allow. An expert was quoted saying that the instructions could build into a dangerous explosive.

OpenAI Reaches 1 Million Paid Users

OpenAI reported having more than 1 million users paying for business versions of ChatGPT, including ChatGPT Team and ChatGPT Enterprise. Almost half of these come from the U.S.

Volkswagen employs ChatGPT in its Cars

Volkswagen began deploying ChatGPT in the US markets as voice assistants in their vehicles. The new voice assistant branded as Plus Speech was available in the 2025 Jetta and Jetta GLI.

August 2024

OpenAI Teams with Condé Nast

OpenAI has partnered with Condé Nast to integrate stories from leading magazines, such as The New Yorker and Vogue, into its ChatGPT.This deal will likely involve some payments to Condé Nast.

Review of Advanced Voice Mode

A TechCrunch reviewer said that Advanced Voice Mode gives a very convincing experience of talking to an AI. It’s faster and can answer complex questions, but it still doesn’t work as well as traditional virtual assistants like Siri or Alexa.

OpenAI Closes Election Influence Operation

OpenAI shut down several ChatGPT accounts linked to an Iranian group that was creating articles about the U.S. presidential election. They had set up fake news websites but didn’t get much attention.

GPT-4o Has Some Odd Behaviors

OpenAI discovered that the new GPT-4o model can behave strangely.It sometimes repeats the words or interrupts people full of loud noises.

Mobile App of ChatGPT Rakes in Hefty Revenue

In July, the mobile app of ChatGPT brought in the highest amount of money ever to $28 million from app stores.

OpenAI Creates Tool for Cheating Student Detection

OpenAI is working on a tool that would help detect if students are using ChatGPT to cheat; however, they haven’t decided if they are going to release it.

July 2024

ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode Starts Rolling Out to Some Users

OpenAI is giving users their first access to GPT-4o’s updated realistic audio responses. The alpha version is now available to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users, and the company says the feature will gradually roll out to all Plus users in the fall of 2024.

The release follows controversy surrounding the voice’s similarity to Scarlett Johansson, leading OpenAI to delay its release.

OpenAI Announces New Search Prototype, SearchGPT

OpenAI is testing SearchGPT, a new AI search experience to compete with Google. SearchGPT aims to elevate search queries with “timely answers” from across the internet, as well as the ability to ask follow-up questions.

The temporary prototype is currently only available to a small group of users and its publisher partners, like The Atlantic, for testing and feedback.

OpenAI Could Lose $5 Billion This Year, Report Claims

A new report from The Information, based on undisclosed financial information, claims OpenAI could lose up to $5 billion due to how costly the business is to operate.

The report also says the company could spend as much as $7 billion in 2024 to train and operate ChatGPT.

OpenAI Unveils GPT-4o Mini

OpenAI released its latest small AI model, GPT-4o mini. The company says GPT-4o mini, which is cheaper and faster than OpenAI’s current AI models, outperforms industry-leading small AI models on reasoning tasks involving text and vision. GPT-4o mini will replace GPT-3.5 Turbo as the smallest model OpenAI offers.

OpenAI Partners with Los Alamos National Laboratory for Bioscience Research

OpenAI announced a partnership with the Los Alamos National Laboratory to study how AI can be employed by scientists in order to advance research in healthcare and bioscience. This follows other health-related research collaborations at OpenAI, including Moderna and Color Health.

June 2024

OpenAI Makes CriticGPT to Find Mistakes in GPT-4

OpenAI announced it has trained a model off of GPT-4, dubbed CriticGPT, which aims to find errors in ChatGPT’s code output so they can make improvements and better help so-called human “AI trainers” rate the quality and accuracy of ChatGPT responses.

OpenAI Inks Content Deal with TIME

OpenAI and TIME announced a multi-year strategic partnership that brings the magazine’s content, both modern and archival, to ChatGPT. As part of the deal, TIME will also gain access to OpenAI’s technology in order to develop new audience-based products.

OpenAI Delays ChatGPT’s New Voice Mode

OpenAI planned to start rolling out its advanced Voice Mode feature to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users in late June, but it says lingering issues forced it to postpone the launch to July.

OpenAI says Advanced Voice Mode might not launch for all ChatGPT Plus customers until the fall, depending on whether it meets certain internal safety and reliability checks.

ChatGPT Releases App for Mac

ChatGPT for macOS is now available for all users. With the app, users can quickly call up ChatGPT by using the keyboard combination of Option + Space.

The app allows users to upload files and other photos, as well as speak to ChatGPT from their desktop and search through their past conversations.

Apple Brings ChatGPT to Its Apps, Including Siri

Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that it is bringing ChatGPT to Siri and other first-party apps and capabilities across its operating systems.

The ChatGPT integrations, powered by GPT-4o, will arrive on iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia later this year and will be free without the need to create a ChatGPT or OpenAI account. Features exclusive to paying ChatGPT users will also be available through Apple devices.

House Oversight Subcommittee Invites Scarlett Johansson to Testify About ‘Sky’ Controversy

Scarlett Johansson has been invited to testify about the controversy surrounding OpenAI’s Sky voice at a hearing for the House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation.

In a letter, Rep. Nancy Mace said Johansson’s testimony could “provide a platform” for concerns around deepfakes.

ChatGPT Experiences Two Outages in a Single Day

ChatGPT was down twice in one day: one multi-hour outage in the early hours of the morning Tuesday and another outage later in the day that is still ongoing. Anthropic’s Claude and Perplexity also experienced some issues.

April 2024

US Newspapers Sue Open AI and Microsoft Over Copyright Infringement

The New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Denver Post-all owned by Alden Global Capital-have just sued the companies for allegedly utilizing millions of copyrighted articles in developing ChatGPT and Copilot.

OpenAI and Financial Times Sign Content Licensing Deal

In a content licensing deal, developer of the AI chatbot, ChatGPT, OpenAI, has partnered with a leading European news publishing group called Financial Times. Under this deal, users of the AI chatbot will gain access to selected summaries, quotes, and rich links to FT journalism on relevant queries.

OpenAI opens Tokyo hub, adds GPT-4 model optimized for Japanese

OpenAI is opening a new office in Tokyo, which will be developing an openly Japanese-language GPT-4 model. That says plenty about preparedness and an openness to adjusting language functionality as OpenAI continues to expand.

Sam Altman pitches ChatGPT Enterprise to Fortune 500 companies

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has been demoing versions of its corporate-tinted AI services to hundreds of Fortune 500 executives across several cities in April.

OpenAI Introduces “more direct, less wordy” variant of GPT-4 Turbo

Premium subscribers get not only the latest version of GPT-4 Turbo but also Turbo for those on a subscription plan that’s like ChatGPT Plus, Team, or Enterprise.

That model encompasses not only the enhanced writing, mathematical operations, logical reasoning, and coding but also a new knowledge base.

ChatGPT no longer needs accounts… anymore?

You can now use ChatGPT without signing up. There’s a catch, though-the experience will be different. Users who do not have accounts will not be able to save or share chats, use custom instructions, or access other features dependent on the persistent account.

According to reports, OpenAI has hinted that this version will have “slightly more restrictive content policies.”

March 2024

OpenAI’s chatbot store fills with spam

Reports indicate that OpenAI’s GPT Store is teeming with spammy, copyright-infringing GPTs, which upon a quick search, say they generate art in the style of Disney and Marvel but mostly serve as bridges to paid services third parties provide.

The New York Times responds to OpenAI’s claims that it “hacked” ChatGPT for its copyright lawsuit

The New York Times, meanwhile, argued in a legal filing opposing OpenAI’s motion to dismiss its copyright infringement lawsuit that OpenAI’s claim that the newspaper “hacked” into its products was both false and irrelevant to the case. The newspaper added that at least some users of ChatGPT reported using the tool to evade its paywalls.

OpenAI VP doesn’t say whether artists should get paid for training data

During a SXSW 2024 panel, OpenAI VP of consumer products Peter Deng refused to say whether artists whose work fed generative AI models should be compensated for the usage.

Although they give artists the right to opt out, and have their work removed from training datasets, some have found that whole process too much of a pain.

ChatGPT consumes more than half a million kilowatt-hours of electricity per day

A new report claims ChatGPT consumes over half a million kilowatt-hours of electricity daily. This apparently has a huge environmental footprint because the application consumes an estimated 17,000 times the electricity used by the average U.S. household for handling approximately 200 million requests daily, per report in The New Yorker.

ChatGPT can now read its answers aloud

OpenAI has launched the Read Aloud feature for web and mobile versions of ChatGPT, which allows the AI to read back the response in five different voice options along with support in 37 languages.

February 2024

OpenAI Has agreed with Dublin City Council to use GPT-4 for Tourism

The council in Dublin will work with OpenAI to create a travel plan customized with this time GPT-4 to make the cultural attractions that will facilitate increased tourist entry into Europe.

A law firm used ChatGPT as a reason to explain their six-figure legal bill

A New York firm called Cuddy Law was sternly reprimanded by the judge for using ChatGPT to expand on the hourly billing rate at the firm. The firm submitted a $113,500 bill that was trimmed back by the District Judge who claimed the figure was “well above” reasonable.

ChatGPT had an odd glitch for several hours

Users had reported that ChatGPT was giving nonsensical answers for several hours. OpenAI initiated an investigation into the issue, which ranged from repeating phrases to simply confusing or just wrong answers. The error was corrected by the following morning.

Match Group issued a statement jointly with ChatGPT. The company stated that it had reached an agreement with OpenAI

That kind of Apps are being run by Match Group, including Tinder and OkCupid, as also announced that has entered into an enterprise agreement with OpenAI in a press release also authored by ChatGPT. This is the latest step towards using AI technology for work-related tasks, the company said in a large investment into AI for 2024.

ChatGPT will now remember-and forget-things you tell it to

New memory controls have begun to roll out for limited free and paid users who can now instruct ChatGPT to remember or forget particular information. Users will also have the ability to see what the AI recalls, and deleting chat history will not delete these memories but delete them explicitly.

OpenAI starts rolling out “Temporary Chat” feature

Till recently, it could only be accessed for a select few free and subscribing users, who could discuss with ChatGPT without the latter remembering the previous conversations or accessing the memory. OpenAI may however save copies for safety purposes of these for up to 30 days.

January 2024

ChatGPT users can now invoke GPTs directly in chats

Paid users of ChatGPT can now bring GPTs into a conversation by typing “@” and selecting a GPT from the list. The chosen GPT will have an understanding of the full conversation, and different GPTs can be “tagged in” for different use cases and needs.

ChatGPT is reportedly leaking usernames and passwords from users’ private conversations

Screenshots provided to Ars Technica found that ChatGPT is potentially leaking unpublished research papers, login credentials, and private information from its users. An OpenAI representative told Ars Technica that the company was investigating the report.

ChatGPT is violating Europe’s privacy laws, Italian DPA tells OpenAI

OpenAI has been told it’s suspected of violating European Union privacy laws, following a multi-month investigation of ChatGPT by Italy’s data protection authority. Details of the draft findings haven’t been disclosed, but in a response, OpenAI said: “We want our AI to learn about the world, not about private individuals.”

OpenAI partners with Common Sense Media to collaborate on AI guidelines

In an effort to win the trust of parents and policymakers, OpenAI announced it’s partnering with Common Sense Media to collaborate on AI guidelines and education materials for parents, educators, and young adults.

The organization works to identify and minimize tech harms to young people and previously flagged ChatGPT as lacking in transparency and privacy.

OpenAI responds to Congressional Black Caucus about lack of diversity on its board

After a letter from the Congressional Black Caucus questioned the lack of diversity in OpenAI’s board, the company responded.

The response, signed by CEO Sam Altman and Chairman of the Board Bret Taylor, said building a complete and diverse board was one of the company’s top priorities and that it was working with an executive search firm to assist it in finding talent.

OpenAI drops prices and fixes ‘lazy’ GPT-4 that refused to work

In a blog post, OpenAI announced price drops for GPT-3.5’s API, with input prices dropping to 50% and output by 25%, to $0.0005 per thousand tokens in, and $0.0015 per thousand tokens out. GPT-4 Turbo also got a new preview model for API use, which includes an interesting fix that aims to reduce “laziness” that users have experienced.

OpenAI bans developer of a bot impersonating a presidential candidate

OpenAI has suspended AI startup Delphi, which developed a bot impersonating Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) to help bolster his presidential campaign.

The ban comes just weeks after OpenAI published a plan to combat election misinformation, which listed “chatbots impersonating candidates” as against its policy.

OpenAI announces partnership with Arizona State University

Beginning in February, Arizona State University will have full access to ChatGPT’s Enterprise tier, which the university plans to use to build a personalized AI tutor, develop AI avatars, bolster their prompt engineering course, and more. It marks OpenAI’s first partnership with a higher education institution.

Winner of a literary prize reveals around 5% of her novel was written by ChatGPT

After receiving the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for her novel The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy, author Rie Kudan admitted that around 5% of the book quoted ChatGPT-generated sentences “verbatim.” Interestingly enough, the novel revolves around a futuristic world with a pervasive presence of AI.

Sam Altman teases video capabilities for ChatGPT and the release of GPT-5

In a conversation with Bill Gates on the Unconfuse Me podcast, Sam Altman confirmed an upcoming release of GPT-5 that will be “fully multimodal with speech, image, code, and video support.” Altman said users can expect to see GPT-5 drop sometime in 2024.

OpenAI announces team to build ‘crowdsourced’ governance ideas into its models

OpenAI is forming a Collective Alignment team of researchers and engineers to create a system for collecting and “encoding” public input on its models’ behaviors into OpenAI products and services.

This comes as a part of OpenAI’s public program to award grants to fund experiments in setting up a “democratic process” for determining the rules AI systems follow.

OpenAI unveils plan to combat election misinformation

In a blog post, OpenAI announced users will not be allowed to build applications for political campaigning and lobbying until the company works out how effective their tools are for “personalized persuasion.”

Users will also be banned from creating chatbots that impersonate candidates or government institutions and from using OpenAI tools to misrepresent the voting process or otherwise discourage voting.

The company is also testing out a tool that detects DALL-E generated images and will incorporate access to real-time news, with attribution, in ChatGPT.

OpenAI changes policy to allow military applications

In an unannounced update to its usage policy, OpenAI removed language previously prohibiting the use of its products for the purposes of “military and warfare.”

In an additional statement, OpenAI confirmed that the language was changed in order to accommodate military customers and projects that do not violate their ban on efforts to use their tools to “harm people, develop weapons, for communications surveillance, or to injure others or destroy property.”

ChatGPT subscription aimed at small teams debuts

Aptly called ChatGPT Team, the new plan provides a dedicated workspace for teams of up to 149 people using ChatGPT as well as admin tools for team management.

In addition to gaining access to GPT-4, GPT-4 with Vision, and DALL-E3, ChatGPT Team lets teams build and share GPTs for their business needs.

OpenAI’s GPT store officially launches

After some back and forth over the last few months, OpenAI’s GPT Store is finally here. The feature lives in a new tab in the ChatGPT web client and includes a range of GPTs developed both by OpenAI’s partners and the wider dev community.

To access the GPT Store, users must be subscribed to one of OpenAI’s premium ChatGPT plans — ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Enterprise, or the newly launched ChatGPT Team.

Developing AI models would be “impossible” without copyrighted materials, OpenAI claims

Following a proposed ban on using news publications and books to train AI chatbots in the U.K., OpenAI submitted a plea to the House of Lords communications and digital committee.

OpenAI argued that it would be “impossible” to train AI models without using copyrighted materials and that they believe copyright law “does not forbid training.”

OpenAI claims The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit is without merit

OpenAI published a public response to The New York Times’s lawsuit against them and Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright law, claiming that the case is without merit. In the response, OpenAI reiterates its view that training AI models using publicly available data from the web is fair use.

It also makes the case that regurgitation is less likely to occur with training data from a single source and places the onus on users to “act responsibly.”

OpenAI’s app store for GPTs planned to launch next week

After being delayed in December, OpenAI plans to launch its GPT Store sometime in the coming week, according to an email viewed by TechCrunch.

OpenAI says developers building GPTs will have to review the company’s updated usage policies and GPT brand guidelines to ensure their GPTs are compliant before they’re eligible for listing in the GPT Store.

OpenAI’s update notably didn’t include any information on the expected monetization opportunities for developers listing their apps on the storefront.

OpenAI moves to shrink regulatory risk in EU around data privacy

In an email, OpenAI detailed an incoming update to its terms, including changing the OpenAI entity providing services to EEA and Swiss residents to OpenAI Ireland Limited.

The move appears to be intended to shrink its regulatory risk in the European Union, where the company has been under scrutiny over ChatGPT’s impact on people’s privacy.

ALSO READ:

FAQs

What is ChatGPT? How does it work?

ChatGPT is a large language chatbot designed by the San Francisco-based AI tech startup OpenAI which uses artificial intelligence to produce text to be used in answering any user prompt. It uses GPT-4 which is a large language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.

When was ChatGPT out?

ChatGPT was opened to the public at large on November 30, 2022.

Is the newest version of ChatGPT?

ChatGPT free and paid versions, ChatGPT Plus, is upgraded occasionally. The latest version that can be exploited is GPT-4o.

Am I free to use ChatGPT?

Yes, besides ChatGPT Plus that you pay for, there is also a free version of ChatGPT that you may use after logging in.

Who can access ChatGPT?

Everyone! Tech companies and search engines are rapidly shifting to the use of ChatGPT for the mass production of text and near-instant answers to queries.

What Companies Use ChatGPT?

Several companies that have integrated ChatGPT, but the others do not fully incorporate it into the respective organization. Microsoft, a Redmond-based company, stated that it is bringing a Windows 11 experience with a Bing chat experience based on ChatGPT to its audience at its 2023 Build conference.

Brooklyn-based startup in 3D display, Looking Glass, employs ChatGPT in order to create communicable holograms. Solana, a non-profit organization, has also developed a plugin into its network to help onboard users into web3 using ChatGPT.

What does GPT stand for in ChatGPT?

GPT means Generative Pre-Trained Transformer .

What is the difference between a chatbot and ChatGPT?

A chatbot refers to any software or system that can conduct a conversation with a human but not necessarily with AI. For example, some are just canned responses following a set of rules. In this case, it’s different with ChatGPT in that it’s using AI and the application of LLM technology to generate text-based responses to a prompt.

Can ChatGPT write essays?

Yes, it can.

Can ChatGPT libel?

Those algorithms work without distinguishing between what is true and what is not. They have been designed simply to generate text that sounds plausible. That’s a problem, particularly when it vomits out spurious accusations.

The answer to such odious communications by ChatGPT will change with the tech experts and legal minds getting together on such issues.

Does ChatGPT have an app?

Yes, there is a free mobile application for iOS and Android that contains ChatGPT.

What is the word limit of ChatGPT?

It isn’t publicly documented, but in reality, there are some word limits after approx. 500 words.

Does ChatGPT have an API?

Yes. It was launched on 1 March 2023.

What are some real-world applications of ChatGPT?

Programming, scriptwriting, email replies, creating listicles, brainstorming ideas for your next blog post, summarization, and many more.

Some in-depth applications of ChatGPT includes in coding, debugging the code, researching in programming languages, discussing a scientific idea, and problems solving.

Is ChatGPT a good coder?

It doesn’t do well with simple programs but can, appears to do so in some cases, come up with workable Python code. However, ChatGPT cannot generate entire code for the application since it does not know the context.

Can I save a chat with ChatGPT?

Yes. Users can bookmark conversations from the sidebar in the ChatGPT interface, but, at present, it does not have sharing options within an application.

Are there alternatives to ChatGPT?

Yes, several AI-driven chatbot competitors exist, including Together, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude. Others also maintain the open-source alternatives.

How does ChatGPT take its stance on data privacy?

It provides relevant area, the EU citizens the rights to object for processing their personal information, submitting an appropriate form in request for deletion of references produced by AI to them.

However, OpenAI does not take a duty to comply with all deletion requests because Open AI tries to balance privacy with freedom of expression in a manner consistent with the laws applicable in the jurisdictions.

Controversies around ChatGPT

It is actually true that the recent integration of its tech with OpenAI in the Clyde bot on Discord led to its manipulation into producing tutorials on illegal manufacture of drugs.

Besides, an Australian mayor threatened to drag OpenAI to court for defamation because he was allegedly falsely implicated in untrue claims brought against him by a ChatGPT.

Articles by CNET but with unknown bylines only incensed people; readers recognized these articles as written by AI authors. Several colleges and universities in the United States, including New York City Public Schools, banned the use of ChatGPT due to plagiarism and the spread of misinformation.

Where can I see some examples of chat prompts for ChatGPT?

There are free marketplaces and paid-for marketplaces offering chat prompts for both, PromptBase and ChatX, and so many more pop up each week.

Can someone identify a ChatGPT chat?

Detection seems pretty difficult. There are a lot of tools claiming to be able to identify ChatGPT text but to date tests have produced very inconsistent results.

Are the chats from ChatGPT publicly available?

No, but OpenAI recently patched a bug that inadvertently made the titles of their conversations visible to other users on the service.

What litigation is there about ChatGPT?

There are no complaints filed specifically against ChatGPT. However OpenAI is a defendant in at least one case involving more general issues related to AI systems trained on public data that may bear on ChatGPT.

Is ChatGPT plagued by plagiarism issues?

Absolutely. The text creating AI models such as ChatGPT repeat the same content from the training data and thus give out potential plagiarism issues.

By Shoaib Awan

Shoaib Awan is your trusted guide in the ever-evolving world of technology. With a passion for simplifying complex concepts, Shoaib breaks down the latest tech trends, gadgets, and software innovations for tech enthusiasts and everyday users alike. From in-depth product reviews to step-by-step tutorials and insider tips on emerging technologies, his blog is the go-to destination for staying ahead in the digital age. Whether you're a seasoned tech geek or just starting to explore, Shoaib's content is here to make the world of tech both accessible and exciting.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *