At A Scale That Matters

AI's graduation into scale in the business mainstream

- By Shubhranshu Singh

The pace at which ChatGPT reached 1 million users was unprecedented in the history of technology adoption. It took just five days for ChatGPT to hit this milestone after its public release in November 2022, faster than any major innovation before it. By contrast, technologies like electricity and the telephone took decades to reach a comparable level of usage, as they required physical infrastructure and slower societal adaptation. Radio took about 38 years, television 13 years, and even the internet, often considered the fastest-spreading pre-AI technology, took around four years to reach 1 million users. Social platforms in the digital age saw quicker uptake:

Facebook took 10 months, Instagram 2.5 months, and TikTok 9 months. But ChatGPT's adoption was fuelled by zero infrastructure barriers, instant utility across professions, viral sharing, and a longstanding public curiosity about AI, marking it as the fastest-spreading consumer tech tool in human history. ChatGPT set a record for 100 million active monthly users within 60 days of its launch. In his 2023 Open AI DevDay keynote, Sam Altman claimed that 92 per cent of Fortune 500 companies were using ChatGPT in their operations.

Business users, too, were enthused. Tasks such as drafting and rewriting emails, producing routine content, responding to customer queries, and automating repetitive communication saw the usage of ChatGPT, and it was praised as a productivity booster. Individual adoption rose ahead of organisational adoption. Chatbots such as ChatGPT, Google Bard (now Gemini), and Microsoft Bing Chat (now Copilot) initially saw adoption primarily among individual users globally.