ChatGPT
OpenAI's chat assistant, launched as a free research preview on 30 November 2022, which brought large language models to the general public.
OpenAI, 2022
A chat window where you can ask almost anything in plain language and get a fluent, conversational answer. It made millions of people try AI for the first time.
Where it fits
+All relationships as a list
Is a kind of / part of
Siblings
How it works
OpenAI released ChatGPT on 30 November 2022 as a free “research preview”. Technically it was not a breakthrough model: it was a GPT-family large language model, fine-tuned for dialogue with demonstrations and RLHF, much like the earlier InstructGPT. What changed was access: a simple chat window anyone could use.
Its popularity turned chat assistants into a mainstream product category almost overnight and set off a wave of competing systems such as Claude and Gemini.
The models behind ChatGPT have been replaced and extended many times since (adding images, voice, tools and reasoning models), so this page sticks to the durable facts about its origin and training approach.
Everyday use cases
- Case 01
How you've probably met it
The ChatGPT website and apps, or features built on OpenAI's models inside other products.
Strengths, weaknesses and when to use it
Strengths
- Made capable language models easy to use for anyone through a chat interface.
Weaknesses
- Like all LLMs, it can state incorrect things confidently, so important facts need checking.
When to use itFor drafting, explaining, brainstorming and coding help, with verification for anything important.
Compare with
Go deeper
Sources
- [1]OpenAI, Introducing ChatGPT (2022)
- [2]Ouyang et al., Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback (InstructGPT, 2022)
Facts checked as of 2026-10-12