ChatGPT

ChatGPT

Basic Information
Release Year	2022
Product Type	Software, Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, Large Language Models
In Production	Yes
Official Website	https://chatgpt.com/

ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a generative artificial intelligence application developed and marketed by OpenAI. It was released on November 30th, 2022.^[1] It is a large language model (LLM) specialized in dialog that can perform human-like conversations. Various iterations of ChatGPT include GPT-3, GPT-4, GPT-4o, and previews of OpenAI-o1, OpenAI-o1 mini and GPT-5.^[2][3]

Users who are not logged in can use ChatGPT, but their access is limited (for example, they can only have one conversation at a time and cannot save chat history).^[4] After GPT-5’s release, manual model selection is not available to all users: OpenAI limits the ChatGPT “model picker” to paid tiers, while other users may be routed automatically (e.g., via “Auto,” which can switch between model variants).^[5][6]

A mobile phone number in a friendly country is required to better track your identity.^{[citation needed]}

From OpenAI's data usage policy:^[7]

We share content with a select group of trusted service providers that help us provide our services. We share the minimum amount of content we need in order to accomplish this purpose and our service providers are subject to strict confidentiality and security obligations. We do not use or share user content for marketing or advertising purposes.

The wording does not detail the extent of conversations shared with OpenAI's trusted service providers.

ChatGPT terms of service say it should not be used to make decisions about people.^[8] However, their advertising claims it is "PhD level" and makes other claims that seem to imply it is reliable. Many people use ChatGPT as if its output were meaningful, reliable, or a substitute for interaction with a person, with some cases involving "relationships" with the AI. ChatGPT-4o was one of their models known for inducing a lot of vulnerable users into AI psychosis.

Credits (money) expire automatically with no notification, and the credit balance interface makes this process confusing. You must maintain a positive account balance, and you are auto-billed a fixed amount if it goes negative. The interface of users from the United States that have no subscription (Free tier) or are in the Go subscription tier shows integrated ads that appear inside the chats. Accounts can be banned and credits confiscated for typing the wrong things in chat, with no recourse.^{[citation needed]}

Global market share data shows ChatGPT is the most used chatbot in the world (79.98% as of February 2026)^[9]. However, adoption has been declined since 2025 due to recent incidents, controversial decisions and comparable competitors, such as Google Gemini and Claude. ^[10]

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the ChatGPT category.

On March 20, 2023 a bug allowed some users to see other users' conversation titles. Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, stated users couldn't view other users' conversation content. After the bug was fixed, users reported they were unable to view their conversation history. Later reports showed this issue was much bigger than it was thought at first, with OpenAI reporting there were leaks of the users' name, last name, e-mail address, payment address, and partial credit card information.^[11]

Main article: ChatGPT-4o

On May 13, 2024, OpenAI announced and released the model ChatGPT-4o.^[12] The model was temporarily retired from the public in April 2025 due to an update that caused the model to have excessive sycophancy. ^[13]It also had several controversies because of users developing AI psychosis, with some severe cases ending with users committing suicide. ^[14] With the launch of GPT-5 in August 2025, OpenAI removed legacy models from non-API users, such as GPT-4o. This decision caused an outrage, with users complaining about the removal of the models along with the complaints about GPT-5. OpenAI's response was to end paywalling these older models, making them available only for Plus users. In 2026, OpenAI announced they will be removing definitely GPT-4o and other models, such as GPT-5 and GPT-4.1. On February 13, 2026, 4o and other legacy models were removed for non-API users, causing again controversies in social media. These legacy models will be removed for API-users on April 2026. ^{[citation needed]}

On May 13, 2025, New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. A court in New York mandated OpenAI to preserve users' conversation logs, including data from deleted conversations and temporary conversations. This affected Free, Plus, Pro and Team subscription tiers and also non Zero-Data-Retention API users. Edu, Enterprise tiers and Zero-Data-Retention API users were exempt from this.^[15][16] On September 26, 2025, the preservation order was revoked. However, some deleted and temporary chats will still be monitored for being flagged.^[17]

On August 7, 2025, OpenAI released their newest model, GPT-5. The next day, several users complained in social media about the performance of the model, claiming it was underwhelming and was "dumber" than the previous model. Users also realised OpenAI's platform was most of the time setting the lowest-performance GPT-5 models and discovered they can make the platform to set the better-performance models by adding "think harder" in prompts. Sam Altman claimed that a "malfunction" of the autoswitcher was the reason behind GPT-5 performance. ^{[18] [19]}

With a justification to "help teens have an age-appropriate experience on ChatGPT", the platform will be implementing globally an age verification system to detect if a user is over 18 to allow them to access to mature content. OpenAI will scan and analyze the user's account, their conversations and their behavior - including the times of a day they use ChatGPT - to estimate their age. If this system detects a user as underage, it will use third-party tools provided by Persona to estimate their age, asking the user to upload a selfie or their government ID. If the user refuses to send a selfie or their ID, the platform will limit ChatGPT's generated content.^[20]

On January 16, 2026, OpenAI announced that they will be implementing ads for "testing purposes". ^[21][22] On February 9, 2026, ads rolled out, affecting users over 18 from the US who are in Free and Go subscription tiers. Pro, Business and Enterprise tiers are exempt from this. These ads are personalized ads that appear at the bottom of ChatGPT's messages, showing the sponsored site name next to a "Sponsored" text, and below it, links to the sponsored site. OpenAI stated the ads that appear are based on current conversations, ads that user has engaged with, and past chats and ChatGPT's memories. OpenAI also claims the data provided to show ads "it's not shared with advertisers". It is possible to opt-out for getting personalized ads and delete ads data. ^[23] The announcement and release of this patch has raised several concerns about privacy ^[24], data usage, ad experience potentially becoming worse ^[25], and the AI usage to manipulate users. After the ad release in the US, users have experienced that ads can appear on a new conversation by just sending the first prompt, something that was considered as aggresive advertising. ^{[26] [27]}

• OpenAI
• Artificial intelligence
• Claude