What is ChatGPT? Here’s everything you need to know about ChatGPT, the chatbot everyone’s still talking about

OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, and it’s since taken the world by storm.

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ChatGPT is getting a futuristic human update.
ChatGPT has drawn users at a feverish pace and spurred Big Tech to release other AI chatbots.
Here’s how ChatGPT works — and what’s coming next.

OpenAI’s blockbuster chatbot ChatGPT is getting a new update.

On Monday, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4o for ChatGPT, a new version of the bot that can hold conversations with users in a very human tone. The new version of the chatbot will also have vision abilities.

The futuristic reveal quickly prompted jokes about parallels to the movie “Her,” with some calling the chatbot’s new voice “cringe.”

The move is a big step for the future of AI-powered virtual assistants, which tech companies have been racing to develop.

Since its release in 2022, hundreds of millions of people have experimented with the tool, which is already changing how the internet looks and feels to users.

Users have flocked to ChatGPT to improve their personal lives and boost productivity. Some workers have used the AI chatbot to develop code, write real estate listings, and create lesson plans, while others have made teaching the best ways to use ChatGPT a career all to itself.

ChatGPT offers dozens of plug-ins to those who subscribe to ChatGPT Plus subscription. An Expedia one can help you book a trip, while an OpenTable one will get nab you a dinner reservation. And last month, OpenAI launched Code Interpreter, a version of ChatGPT that can code and analyze data.

While the personal tone of conversations with an AI bot like ChatGPT can evoke the experience of chatting with a human, the technology, which runs on “large language model tools,” doesn’t speak with sentience and doesn’t “think” the way people do.

That means that even though ChatGPT can explain quantum physics or write a poem on command, a full AI takeover isn’t exactly imminent, according to experts.

“There’s a saying that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually give you Shakespeare,” said Matthew Sag, a law professor at Emory University who studies copyright implications for training and using large language models like ChatGPT.

“There’s a large number of monkeys here, giving you things that are impressive — but there is intrinsically a difference between the way that humans produce language, and the way that large language models do it,” he said.

Chatbots like ChatGPT are powered by large amounts of data and computing techniques to make predictions to string words together in a meaningful way. They not only tap into a vast amount of vocabulary and information, but also understand words in context. This helps them mimic speech patterns while dispatching an encyclopedic knowledge.

Other tech companies like Google and Meta have developed their own large language model tools, which use programs that take in human prompts and devise sophisticated responses.

Despite the AI’s impressive capabilities, some have called out OpenAI’s chatbot for spewing misinformation, stealing personal data for training purposes, and even encouraging students to cheat and plagiarize on their assignments.

Some recent efforts to use chatbots for real-world services have proved troubling. In 2023, the mental health company Koko came under fire after its founder wrote about how the company used GPT-3 in an experiment to reply to users.

Koko cofounder Rob Morris hastened to clarify on Twitter that users weren’t speaking directly to a chatbot, but that AI was used to “help craft” responses.

Read Insider’s coverage on ChatGPT and some of the strange new ways that both people and companies are using chat bots: