The claim that it reached 100 million users within two months has been reported by many news outlets, which all seem to bottom out in data from Similarweb. I was not able to find a detailed report, but it looks like they have more data behind a paywall. I think it’s reasonable to accept this claim for now, but, again, it might be different in some way from what the media is reporting1.
FWIW, there’s an article somewhere quoting an OAer saying that the real number was more like half that.
Of course, what means is still highly ambiguous. Accounts which logged in and tried at least one prompt ever? They couldn’t know a more reasonable metric like ‘monthly average users’ at the time, of course, but they should have a better idea of ChatGPT staying power now. And then you have the fact that people love to abuse free services: not long after launch, people were wrapping it to use it as a free API, and because many countries don’t have access (like ChatGPT), there were services routinely popping up offering covert access (especially in China). Playing Whac-a-mole with all these abusers would drastically inflate accounts as they get created, used, and eventually banned.
FWIW, there’s an article somewhere quoting an OAer saying that the real number was more like half that.
Of course, what means is still highly ambiguous. Accounts which logged in and tried at least one prompt ever? They couldn’t know a more reasonable metric like ‘monthly average users’ at the time, of course, but they should have a better idea of ChatGPT staying power now. And then you have the fact that people love to abuse free services: not long after launch, people were wrapping it to use it as a free API, and because many countries don’t have access (like ChatGPT), there were services routinely popping up offering covert access (especially in China). Playing Whac-a-mole with all these abusers would drastically inflate accounts as they get created, used, and eventually banned.