OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot, has grown immensely since first capturing public attention upon its launch in November 2022. Originally designed as an advanced productivity tool for generating text, including essays and coding tasks from simple user prompts, the chatbot rapidly evolved into a cultural and technological phenomenon, boasting over 300 million weekly active users worldwide.
Throughout 2024, OpenAI achieved several significant milestones. Notably, the company partnered with Apple to power Apple’s generative AI offering called Apple Intelligence. It also introduced GPT-4o, a sophisticated model capable of voice interactions, and unveiled Sora, an eagerly awaited AI model specializing in text-to-video generation. Despite these innovations, the year was not without turmoil. OpenAI saw high-profile departures from its executive ranks, including co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati. Further complicating matters, the company faced legal challenges, such as copyright infringement suits from newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital and an injunction filed by Elon Musk attempting to halt OpenAI’s transition toward profitability.
In 2025, OpenAI is confronting intensified competition, particularly from Chinese rivals such as DeepSeek. To mitigate these pressures, OpenAI is actively working to strengthen its ties with government officials in Washington, coupled with ambitious infrastructure projects, including a joint $50 billion data center venture with Softbank and Oracle. Additionally, the company is reportedly preparing for one of the largest fundraising rounds in history—speculated at around $40 billion—amid a staggering valuation of $340 billion.
Recently, OpenAI stated it could reconsider its stringent AI safety standards if competitors release their AI products without comparable safeguards in place, underscoring industry-wide concerns about the balance between innovation speed and responsible AI deployment. Beyond that, reports surfaced that OpenAI is working on creating its own social media network, potentially positioning it directly against platforms controlled by tech leaders like Musk and Zuckerberg.
OpenAI also announced notable product decisions. After a surprisingly short lifespan, it will retire its GPT-4.5 model from general API availability in July, opting instead to emphasize a slightly lower-powered GPT-4.1 model line, particularly optimized for coding and technical tasks. Scheduled for the end of this month, GPT-4, launched more than two years prior, will also be discontinued as a default option within ChatGPT itself, in favor of GPT-4o.
Additional recent enhancements include ChatGPT’s newfound ability to remember previous user conversations for tailored interactions, an image-generation feature that has already attracted massive user engagement (surpassing 700 million images so far), and preliminary work on a watermarking feature for generated visuals. Moreover, offering ChatGPT Plus free to college students in North America has driven further adoption among younger demographics.
Internal operations have presented additional challenges. OpenAI’s operational capacity issues caused by surging product demand prompted CEO Sam Altman to caution users about possible delays in new feature rollouts.
Further expanding its technology eco-system, OpenAI announced plans for an “open” language model, reversing previous restrictive stances held since GPT-2. Additionally, the company adopted Anthropic’s open-source technology standard (the Model Context Protocol) for integrating AI models with external data, aiming to provide more accurate and relevant responses.
Financially, OpenAI anticipates significant growth. Revenue projections suggest tripling this year to $12.7 billion, with further projected expansion in subsequent years, though profitability is not expected before 2029.
Meanwhile, controversies continue to haunt the rapidly evolving chatbot technology. OpenAI witnessed backlash over the capability of its latest image-generation features to replicate copyrighted styles, such as that of Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli, raising concerns about legal implications of AI-generated content. User privacy remains another point of contention, as OpenAI faces a fresh European privacy complaint involving defamatory AI-generated content erroneously attributing serious crimes to an individual.
Recent product advancements include better transcription and voice generation models, updates to the AI voice system offering more engaging real-time conversations, and the launch of premium “agent” offerings tailored for business users—applications designed for complex tasks like software development and lead ranking, potentially priced up to $20,000 monthly.
Beyond these updates, OpenAI also continues to fine-tune power efficiencies in its operations, confirming that power demands for chatbot operations may be significantly more sustainable than previously suggested. The company has steadily improved transparency about how its “reasoning” models reach conclusions, likely reflecting competitive pressures from rival AI firms.
Notably, OpenAI’s ChatGPT continues growing across demographic segments and has become increasingly prevalent among younger users for educational purposes. The company also expanded its government-focused offerings through tailored ChatGPT products for U.S. government agencies.
As OpenAI navigates a complicated landscape of technological achievement, intense rivalry, legal scrutiny, and ethical challenges, the company’s trajectory remains closely watched across industries, government sectors, and the broader public.
