ChatGPT usage soars as the AI platform gains popularity

Yahoo Finance’s Allie Garfinkle joins the Live show to discuss ChatGPT’s rise in popularity as well as reports that Baidu is looking to build its own AI-powered chatbot.

Video Transcript

RACHELLE AKUFFO: All right. Well, ChatGPT is among the fastest growing consumer apps in internet history. And with nearly 60 million monthly active users in December, it's showing no signs of slowing down. Well, our team spoke to Cathie Wood, ARK Invest founder and CEO, about the latest trend. Take a listen to what she had to say.

CATHIE WOOD: What I would be looking for a little bit more is how are companies harnessing AI for their own businesses. Do they have these proprietary data sets? So that's the first thing. Because AI is going to enable the most massive productivity increase in our history.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Well, joining us now to break down the OpenAI computer program is Yahoo Finance's Allie Garfinkle . We know that Cathie likes to do a long play. So she's usually ahead of the game on some of these things. Still waiting for them to pay off. But what about ChatGPT.

ALLIE GARFINKLE: So Rachelle, ChatGPT is on pace to pass 100 million active monthly users after just two months since its launch. This data is from UBS. And I want to put in some context the company that puts ChatGPT in. So here you have the months to reach 100 million global active monthly users. You have Instagram at 30 months. Pinterest at 41. You have TikTok at an incredible 9. And you have ChatGPT at 2. Now, for context, you think about Google Translate, Spotify, Uber.

We think of these as spectacularly successful apps, tech problems aside. And that is an incredibly important part of this. The other key fact here, Rachelle, the total addressable market for generative AI could be over $1 trillion. And ChatGPT is currently averaging 13 million unique visitors per day, which is more than double what we saw in December. So some of this data, frankly, is pretty jaw-dropping. We're seeing applications all over the place.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: When you consider just how recently we even found out about this company, only a few years, and being just two months away from hitting that level. It really is mind boggling. Now, is there any company looking to compete with ChatGPT?

ALLIE GARFINKLE: There certainly are a lot of would be competitors. Of course, the most famous case of this is Google. The ChatGPT has been called a Google killer. I personally think that while talking about ChatGPT as a Google killer is a little overblown, it doesn't change the fact that Google is going to be asked about ChatGPT and its plans with generative AI today in its earnings call.

At the same time from China, you also have Baidu, which is positioning itself as China's top AI developer. So they're reportedly getting in the game. And Baidu stock has popped on the news. Lastly, even yesterday in Meta's earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg spoke positively about generative AI saying that he's very optimistic about it. And doesn't want to get ahead of the game. But that it's something he's watching. So Rachelle, there would be competitors all around. But we'll see who comes to the fore as the real competitor to ChatGPT.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: This race really is heating up. Fantastic stuff there. Allie Garfinkle there for us.