【Japan】

OpenAI's artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT is Japanthe fastest-growing app in history.

This is according to a UBS study (via CBS News), which claims that ChatGPT had 13 million unique visitors per day in January, which is more than double the visitors it had in December. ChatGPT has only been around two months (can you believe it?), and it already has 100 million monthly users, the study concluded.

The study, which cites data from analytics company Similarweb, positions ChatGPT well over other fast-growing apps such as TikTok and Instagram. In comparison, it took nine months for TikTok to reach 100 million monthly active users; for Instagram, it took two and a half years.

"In 20 years following the internet space, we cannot recall a faster ramp in a consumer internet app," USB's analysts wrote in the study.

The report comes just a day after OpenAI launched ChatGPT Plus, which is a paid version of the chatbot. It costs $20 per month, offering users access to ChatGPT during peak usage times, faster response times, and priority access to new features.

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ChatGPT has been immensely popular almost immediately after launch, with people using it for a wide variety of tasks, ranging from writing silly poems, to cheating in college essays, to having the bot write malware. Microsoft, who was a previous investor in OpenAI, recently invested an additional $10 billion into the company, and is said to be working on integrating ChatGPT into some of its services, including Bing. ChatGPT also caught the attention of Google, who is said to be developing several public-facing AI tools of its own.

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