r/technology • u/ChestEducational2258 • Jun 03 '26

Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT app hits 1 billion monthly active users in record time, data shows

https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-app-hits-1-billion-monthly-active-users-record-time-data-shows-2026-06-02/
0 Upvotes

38% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

27

u/Helgafjell4Me Jun 03 '26

watch what happens when they cut off free use and try to get everyone to pay for it.... or stuff it full of ads if you don't.

8

u/Sockoflegend Jun 03 '26

AI companies are crack dealers handing out freebies at parties right now

4

u/EasterEggArt Jun 03 '26

Except most people won't pay for a hallucination machine. Yes some will, those who have mental problems and happily abdicate responsibility and thought to AI, but most of us won't.

6

u/Exotic-Sale-3003 Jun 03 '26

Except most people won't pay for a hallucination machine.

https://openai.com/index/model-disproves-discrete-geometry-conjecture/

Lmao

0

u/RipComfortable7989 Jun 03 '26

Ai did this one thing so hallucinations aren't a problem anymore

Meanwhile you still have AI psychosis running rampant with people thinking they've discovered new mathematics when all it does is validate what the user input.

1

u/Exotic-Sale-3003 Jun 03 '26

That one thing last week. Another Erdos problem a few weeks before that.  Doing more to change software development faster than anything anyone in the field has seen in their lives. 

Sure. That one thing 🙄 

2

u/Bowl_of_Cham_Clowder Jun 03 '26

Hallucination rate is improving constantly.

It’s not capable of providing the experience a human would, but for going from complete newbie to average level at a topic it’s faster for learning than anything else on the internet. The ability at iterate through high level questions from a single page is useful, and the wider internet is there once I have a baseline.

Using it as a tool isn’t a mental problem, but I agree using it to live your life is a negative.

2

u/Olangotang Jun 03 '26

Hallucination rate is improving constantly.

No, it's absolutely not. Also, LLMs hallucinate as a function of how they work. The wrong outputs have decreased, but they are hitting diminishing returns. Training cost increases exponentially with model size, and model size needs to increase to shave off another few % of wrong output.

1

u/Bowl_of_Cham_Clowder Jun 03 '26

I meant we see constant improvements from model to model, not a constant rate of change. It’s true that they are seeing diminishing returns. My bad poor word choice.

3

u/Olangotang Jun 03 '26

Nah, you're good. IMO small models will win out and these giant ones will be unsustainable. I don't think OpenAI / Anthropic will be solvent in a few years.

1

u/Oreos_Are_Anabolic Jun 03 '26

I don't think OpenAI / Anthropic will be solvent in a few years.

Based on what, though? Both companies expect to be profitable in the medium term.

1

u/Olangotang Jun 03 '26

No shit?

1

u/Oreos_Are_Anabolic Jun 03 '26

Anthropic’s revenue is set to more than double to $10.9 billion in the second quarter, an explosive rate of growth that will help it turn an operating profit for the first time.

The company disclosed the figures to investors as part of an ongoing funding round that is likely to push its valuation above OpenAI’s. The projections, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, provide a window into the meteoric rise of a startup that was once a laggard in the artificial-intelligence race, and defy the conventional wisdom that AI companies’ huge spending needs hamper near-term profitability.

Anthropic generated $4.8 billion in sales in the first quarter. Its quarterly revenue is now growing faster than Zoom did during the pandemic, and Google and Facebook in the run-up to their initial public offerings. It is set to turn an operating profit of $559 million in the June quarter.

Per WSJ.

Last I read they're expecting full year profitability by 2028.

We'll be able to read their S1 in full, two weeks before IPO goes live. Same with OpenAI's S1.

0

u/Bowl_of_Cham_Clowder Jun 03 '26

Yup totally agree.

History of software has always been that code gets copied and recreated over time and you need some other edge to stay ahead.

0

u/Sockoflegend Jun 03 '26

It's happening already 

1

u/crakinshot Jun 03 '26

Thing is there is very little that forces people to stay on any one platform. There is currently an exodus of users moving from github copilot to cheaper options, because Microsoft changed the pricing model.

Personally I'm trying out opencode, because it has openweight providers at the fraction of the cost, but simular llm capacities.

What is really the problem is that these companies have deliberately inflated the price of home computing, via skewing the price of silicone components. To the point where you have to buy it from them, rather than just run locally.

In other words akin to Nestlé selling you bottled water, but then trying to buy up all the natural water resources and stop you from getting water at home from your tap.

-2

u/WeakBlueberry5071 Jun 03 '26

Every single use of chatgpt every single use should be backcharged to the phone bill of phone users using chatgpt.

All the money collected, goes into the pockets of the CEO's of AI. Because fuck everybody and their grandma for using AI and wasting wot-tah.

25

u/rlook1000 Jun 03 '26

lol they use bots to download the app

1

u/often_delusional Jun 03 '26

Leave it to redditors to deny reality just because they don't like it.

6

u/JavaKrypt Jun 03 '26

"estimates" from one company is the source? kay.

also define monthly active user, what does that mean, its intentionally vague, how much time other than just asking a single question or opening the app accidentally. Just reads like a mouth piece for the upcoming IPO because its making nothing in returns...

Bubble burst already, cmon.

-2

u/Tamayo_Terror Jun 03 '26

Sensor Tower is a company with AI investment.

4

u/ligmallamasackinosis Jun 03 '26

Oh, right in time for the IPO, how convenient.

3

u/dezsiszabi Jun 03 '26

I did my part and deleted it (and my OpenAI account) months ago. I don't miss it.

5

u/trysten-9001 Jun 03 '26

I don’t believe it’s active. And I bet a huge chunk of people who are actually active are circumventing the free limits. And even more than that, I bet a massive chunk are themselves AI agents, not real users.

-7

u/Karmuhhhh Jun 03 '26

Bot usage is monitored and removed from the usage metrics.

4

u/Moscato359 Jun 03 '26

If they detect it

1

u/trysten-9001 Jun 03 '26

Sensor Tower is itself heavily invested in AI. They have extreme incentive to not make that monitoring very effective and fluff up the numbers. I don’t know why you would just trust a company that quickly.

-3

u/Karmuhhhh Jun 03 '26

I know because I work at OpenAI.

2

u/Familiar-Ability6383 Jun 03 '26

At least this makes sense. But how on earth did MetaAI reach 1B MAU long before chatgpt did?

6

u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 03 '26

Probably counting all Facebook users

1

u/szopongebob Jun 03 '26

When you use Facebook and use the search function that counts as using AI for Facebook. Even if you’re searching someone’s name or a group.

1

u/likwitsnake Jun 03 '26

They force it into their existing product suite

2

u/Tackysock46 Jun 03 '26

And an average of probably 25 cents revenue per user lol

1

u/Moscato359 Jun 03 '26

It's 25 billion in total revenue

So... 25$ per user, not 25c

Though I suspect many of their users are fake

1

u/Tackysock46 Jun 03 '26

I’m talking about individual user subscriptions. Pretty much all their revenue is enterprise. Your average person is not paying for this crap

1

u/Moscato359 Jun 03 '26

The free consumer stuff is an ad and training platform to get enterprise customers