ChatGPT - "light years" away from universal adoption

Generative artificial intelligence (AI), especially products launched or announced by tech corporations such as Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta, and the current forerunner in the field, OpenAI, have attracted widespread attention and billions of dollars in investment over the past two years . However, as a recent survey conducted by YouGov for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism suggests, the hype and influx of venture capital is not translating into actual usage, according to Statista, which notes that ChatGPT is "light years" away from universal adoption.

The data from the survey conducted in six countries (Argentina, Denmark, France, Japan, Great Britain, USA), between March 28 and April 30, 2024, on a sample of 12,217 online respondents over the age of 18, show that not even people of the youngest group, between 18 and 24, do not regularly use OpenAI's flagship product, ChatGPT. Only 9% claimed to use it daily, while 18% use it at least once a week. Monthly users represent 12% of all respondents, and 17% say they have used it once or twice.

This data shows that at least 44% of the survey participants have not used ChatGPT even once.

The difference between occasional heavy use and no use is more pronounced in older age groups. While 84% of respondents over the age of 55 have never used the OpenAI chatbot, which produces responses based on understanding context and input data, between 13 and 15% of the remaining age groups have used it a once or twice. Heavy use, meaning at least weekly consultation of ChatGPT, drops from 19% for 25-34 year olds to 9% for 45-54 year olds.

While every major tech corporation is working on its own version of a large language model (LLM), companies like Microsoft and, most recently, Apple have also collaborated with Sam Altman's OpenAI to improve their products .

According to CB Insights data, OpenAI recently became the third most valuable unicorn in the world. The unicorn is a private company with a market valuation of over one billion dollars. In the case of OpenAI, the valuation reached 80 billion dollars. Thus, OpenAI is behind the Chinese technology company ByteDance ($225 billion) and Elon Musk's SpaceX ($150 billion).