It took Netflix three and a half years to reach 1 million users after introducing its groundbreaking, web-driven DVDs-by-mail subscription service in 1999. That was quite an accomplishment, given that people buying into new technologies at that time were considered a niche audience of first adopters unafraid to live on the cutting edge.
In the early 2000s, it took Airbnb two and half years to attract a million users, Facebook 10 months and music streaming service Spotify just five months to reach that audience size — a sign of increasing consumer comfort with innovative tech services that could add value to their daily lives. When Instagram attracted a million users after less than three months in 2010, it was a big deal, with industry watchers calling out the “insane growth” of the photo-sharing app.
If hitting a million users is a key milestone for turning an untested tech service into a mainstream destination, then think about this: OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the generative AI chatbot that debuted on Nov. 30, 2022, reached 1 million users in five days.Â
Five days.Â
That’s mind-blowing.Â
Then think about this: ChatGPT drew 100 million users in just two months.Â
It speaks to the attention we’re all giving to a new generation of chatbots able to have human-like conversations. A year after its launch, ChatGPT has over 150 million unique users (who have to set up an account to use the site) and hosted nearly 1.7 billion visits in November, making it one of the world’s top online destinations, according to Similarweb. The researcher tracks the adoption of today’s most popular generative AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Bard, Microsoft Bing, Character.ai and Claude.ai.
What’s driving all that interest? The potential new use cases chatbots promise, despite privacy and security concerns about how they work and how they might be weaponized by bad actors. While AI has been part of our tech for decades — a large percentage of your Netflix and Amazon recommendations are…
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