ChatGPT

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a web and mobile app that serves as a user-friendly interface for OpenAI’s GPT models. 

While the terms are often used interchangeably, ChatGPT is actually the interface (the chat window and tools), while GPT-5, GPT-5.2 (thinking, instant), etc., are the LLMs powering it.

Originally a simple text-based chatbot, it has now evolved into a multimodal workspace. It allows developers and general users to access powerful, reasoning AI models without needing to write code or manage API keys.

Key Features of ChatGPT

Text and Code Generation: Drafts emails, outlines, or code; analyzes uploaded PDFs, images, and spreadsheets.

Multimodal Capabilities: Processes images for description/analysis and generates images as described in a prompt. 

Agents and Customization: Users can create custom GPTs for specialized tasks using instructions, files, and optional tools. Some plans support agent-like automation (multi-step task execution).

Conversation Sharing: ChatGPT lets users create shareable, view-only URLs to a conversation for sharing with the public. 

Group Chats: Supports shared conversations within certain plans, allowing multiple people to participate in the same chat thread.

Impact of ChatGPT

Before ChatGPT, AI was largely the domain of data scientists and engineers who interacted with models through complex APIs or Python scripts.

ChatGPT revolutionized this by placing a powerful Large Language Model (LLM) behind a simple chat interface that anyone could use. 

ChatGPT helped AI become a broadly accessible tool, used across roles, geographies, age and skill levels.

Bill Gates described the launch of ChatGPT as the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface (GUI) in 1980, noting that it fundamentally changed how humans interact with computers by making natural language the primary interface.