ChatGPT has become the latest sensation in the chatbot field by breaking all product lifecycle records. According to the Gartner hype cycle, a product takes a minimum of two years to hit the ‘plateau’ of expectations. However, ChatGPT has achieved this within just three months.
Launched in November last year, ChatGPT has passed through all cycle stages and is now reaching the mature period of measured expectations, leading to industry adoption.
ChatGPT is an AI-based chatbot created by OpenAI’s research into LLMs like GPT-2, GPT-3, and GPT-3.5. Proofs-of-concept publishing characterizes the technology trigger phase, research papers, and the beginning of mainstream media coverage. OpenAI’s steady pace of innovation laid the groundwork for creating ChatGPT.
The trough of disillusionment followed this phase. As more people began to use ChatGPT, its shortcomings, including the rampant disinformation spread by the chatbot, became apparent. Users found what they termed “jailbreaks,” which were ways to get the LLM to sidestep its programming and provide responses that violate OpenAI’s content policy.
However, ChatGPT’s true capabilities were remembered, resulting in a slow spike in adoption by users who found value in the service. This led to the slope of enlightenment, where an ecosystem began to spring up around the bot, and many community members added extensions to ChatGPT, making it more capable and powerful.
The plateau of productivity represents market maturity and widespread adoption, and ChatGPT has traversed the hype cycle and is currently on its journey to the plateau. The industry has moved past LLMs’ shortcomings and is looking to adapt to the coming wave of AI-generated content.
ChatGPT’s meteoric growth, which scaled to 10 million users within 40 days, has contributed to its success. Instagram took almost a year to reach the same milestone. Not only did ChatGPT complete all stages of the hype cycle in record time, but it has also gone beyond it and become a generational leap in technology. It holds the potential to change the way people interact with chatbots, and Google and Microsoft have already decided to integrate ChatGPT-like chatbots into their search functionalities.
In conclusion, ChatGPT has bypassed the traditional timeline associated with the hype cycle and has become a game-changer in the field of chatbots. Its success can be attributed to its steady pace of innovation, a slow spike in adoption, and the ecosystem that has sprung up around it. With industry adoption, ChatGPT has become a mature product and holds the potential to revolutionize the way people interact with chatbots.
