Since its public debut in November 2022, ChatGPT—the AI chatbot developed by OpenAI—has quickly expanded from a productivity-enhancing assistant into a global phenomenon, counting more than 300 million weekly active users today. The chatbot, designed to generate humanlike text responses to user-provided prompts, began being widely used for a range of tasks from essay-writing and coding to detailed research and image-generation capabilities.
2024 proved particularly transformative for OpenAI. The company forged a major partnership with Apple, integrating its generative AI technology within Apple Intelligence, expanding the capabilities of apps like Siri. OpenAI also introduced GPT-4o, a powerful new AI model enhanced with voice capabilities and advanced multimodal features. Another eagerly anticipated product, the text-to-video AI called Sora, launched in the same year, further showcasing OpenAI’s ambition to broaden the application of generative AI technology.
Yet alongside these successes, OpenAI has navigated several significant hurdles. Key personnel exits, such as co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever and longtime CTO Mira Murati, have shaken the company’s leadership. Legal actions have also emerged, including copyright infringement lawsuits filed by newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital and an injunction case initiated by Elon Musk aimed at preventing OpenAI’s shift into a profit-oriented venture.
In 2025, competitive pressures intensified as Chinese companies, notably DeepSeek, gained ground in the global AI space. Amidst increasing rivalry, OpenAI focused on strengthening ties with Washington policymakers, while simultaneously initiating an expansive data center project in collaboration with SoftBank and Oracle. Additionally, reports indicated discussions were underway for what could become one of the largest funding rounds in history.
Recent months have seen OpenAI continuing to innovate and release numerous ChatGPT updates. Significant among these is OpenAI’s reported plan to permit its “open” AI models to communicate with cloud-hosted models to address complex user questions more effectively. Meanwhile, the company has hinted towards an ambitious move to position an upcoming openly accessible AI model among the best on offer in the market.
Technical developments include GPT-4.1, whose launch met initial scrutiny due to internal assessment gaps and lower-than-expected external benchmark scores. OpenAI’s new suites of specialized AI reasoning models, named o3 and o4-mini, arrived alongside innovative “Flex processing” options, designed to balance cost and response times for users working with less sensitive tasks. The company also unveiled safety monitoring systems on these models to guard against biothreat-related content.
Beyond text capabilities, OpenAI has significantly enhanced ChatGPT’s multimedia features. Users were given centralised “library” access for AI-generated images, and the chatbot’s increasingly versatile interactions were recently bolstered by integrating user conversation histories into AI responses. A beta watermarking feature for images is also underway, alongside a widely praised decision to provide the ChatGPT Plus subscription free to college students throughout the U.S. and Canada for a limited period.
Internally, OpenAI continues tackling operational challenges, including noticeable strain on system capacity due to the rapid adoption and wide use of its new image generation tools. CEO Sam Altman publicly addressed these delays, assuring users efforts were underway to improve reliability and scale operations accordingly.
This year has seen the beginnings of a shift in OpenAI’s product strategy, as the giant announced discontinuation timelines for popular models like GPT-4 and recently introduced GPT-4.5. The company instead aims to focus resources on newer, targeted language and coding models that seek to deliver distinct improvements over their predecessors.
OpenAI’s roadmap also includes experiments in new territory, with the organization recently confirming early-stage developments on an original social media platform, designed either as an independent product or integrated section within ChatGPT. Commercially, the company is moving aggressively towards capturing market share in enterprise and government sectors, along with specialized AI agents promising ultra-premium performance levels at significant subscription costs.
Having rapidly evolved from a novel research demonstration into one of the most potent and polarizing artificial intelligence technologies in history, ChatGPT’s continual updates underscore OpenAI’s resolve to remain at the forefront of the global AI competition, even amid emerging challengers, regulatory scrutiny, and internal transitions.
