December 3, 2025 • 8 mins
As ChatGPT marks 3 years since its release, ABC News Tech Reporter Mike Dobuski discusses the impact of the AI platform, good and bad.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So it's been three years since the launch of chat GPT,
the AI platform that I know all of you have
heard so much about, and to talk about the impact
that platform has had, how much it's grown, and what
to watch for from it moving forward, I want to
bring in ABC News Technology reporter Mike Debuski. Mike really
appreciate it taking a few minutes to come on this morning.
(00:21):
So I would say it's been within the past year
that I've really started to use chat GPT on a
regular basis. But let's go back three years ago when
this first launched. Was there a sense that this could
be as revolutionary of a tool as it seems to
have the potential to be.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, if you look at the original blog post announcing
chat GPT's launch that was posted by OpenAI on November thirtieth,
twenty twenty two, it's pretty modest, right. It doesn't feel
like the announcement of a technology that's going to reshape
our economy and Silicon Valley and various other trees around
the world. Opening Eye did bill this chatbot as an
(01:04):
AI model that can answer follow up questions, admit mistakes,
challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate results, but it was
ultimately a pretty technical post obviously that belied a very
influential future for chat gpt, though the technology launched a
frenzy of hype, obviously a lot of speculation on Wall Street,
(01:24):
but also dire warnings about this technology, including its ability
to potentially spread disinformation online, to displace jobs, to infringe
on copyright, to allow children to cheat on assignments in school,
and to exacerbate mental health crises among people ran. These
are all questions that were still contending with in twenty
twenty five, three years after the launch of chant GPT.
(01:47):
But doubtless it is hugely, hugely popular. You are not
alone in using chant gpt regularly. When one month after
this product launched in November of twenty twenty two, Change
was being used by a million people per week according
to the company. Today that figure is eight hundred million,
according to CEO Sam Altman.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So when people hear about AI, they think about Google,
Gemini their commercials for that, and plaud their commercials for that.
And then of course you've got X and Rock and
you've got Microsoft Copilot that they might be familiar with
from you know, work programs. Was chat GPT really the
(02:29):
start of all of this.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
In some ways, yes, it was very much the first
public facing, easy to access and easy to use generative
AI chatbot that took root in you know, American culture
and then sort of world culture. But it's worth mentioning
that Google, kind of open Ey's main competitor in this space,
has been working on generative AI technology for way longer
(02:55):
than open ai has been around. In fact, the T
in chat GPT is an actual piece of technology. It
stands for a transformer, that's an AI term. It was
created by Google. So that really just does give you
a sort of insight into exactly how influential Google is
in this space. And when we fast forward to today,
(03:16):
you know many for many years now, we've been talking
about how open ai is kind of at the cutting
edge of this, right They're always releasing new models, always
steadily improving their technology, and it kind of woke up
the larger Silicon Valley industry saying, hey, we got to
start working on our own AI stuff. And then you
saw kind of Google come to the table with a
public facing product that you saw, you know, Elon Musk's company,
(03:36):
you know, start to release you know, competing products like
this as well well. Now those established players have caught up,
and Google's latest release, which is called Gemini three, launched
last month to rave reviews people using it for all
kinds of things. Of course, Google can also integrate that
technology into a lot more platforms than open Ai can.
(03:57):
They own Google Search and YouTube and bunch of pixel
phones and so on and so forth. Meanwhile OpenAI owns
none of that, and their latest release, GPT five, nfl
short of expectations when we're talking about benchmark tests. So
it really does sort of underscore Ryan just how competitive
this race still is.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
We're joined by Mike Debuski, ABC News Tech Reporter on
the third anniversary of the launch of Chat GPT. How
much has the platform grown in those three years in
terms of the way it functions and its capabilities.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
So we already talked about how many people use the platform.
Way more people use it now, but they're also using
it more frequently. By July of this past year, people
were sending Chat GPT two point five billion messages per day.
That equates to about twenty nine thousand per second. They
(04:53):
say they have a million business customers now, which is
a big enterprise potential revenue stream for the company, which
remains unprofitable. They're still spending billions more than they actually
make off of subscription services and other corporate partnerships, and
this month they also announced that they're now available in
one hundred and fifty countries, so they are expanding their
(05:14):
reach around the globe as well. Look, it is a
growing technology in a lot of ways, and that cuts
in one direction, meaning you know, hey, they've grown very
quickly in a very short amount of time. It also
means that there's still sort of a nascent technology in
a lot of ways. One thing that has struck me
in talking about this third anniversary of chat GPT is
(05:35):
that a lot of the concerns we had back in
twenty twenty two are still concerns we have today. These
are tools that can still be used to cheat on
homework assignments and have radically reshaped how teachers and education
systems have to think about the tools they give their students.
It still makes things up and hallucinates and deals with
accuracy problems regularly. Even the most advanced models are still
(05:58):
pretty bad at certain things. And of course there are
the darker aspects of this as well. The potential for
these tools to be used at length to exacerbate mental
health crises. Right now, the parents of the teenager who
unfortunately took his life after an extended conversation with chat
gpt I've lodged a lawsuit against open ai, which is
(06:20):
expected to move forward within the next year. That is
something to keep a very close eye on because it
could reshape this industry.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Final question for you, moving forward as we head into
twenty twenty six, what will you be looking for from
open ai and chatchept as it continues to grow and evolve.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, I think that the competition factor here is really
acute for open Ai. Again, they've been striking major deals
with the likes of Nvidia and Oracle and others to
build out the infrastructure needed to support this technology, which
is very energy intensive and requires very expensive computing hardware.
That is continuing to raise eyebrows, particularly on Wall Street
(07:03):
where speculation of an AI bubble continues, that we are
maybe overinflating the value of these companies to a degree
that just can't be sustainable, especially if the economic wins
in the American economy are to shift. I'm also going
to be paying a close attention to some of the
legal challenges that the company is facing. We already mentioned
the lawsuit over mental health problems, but there is also
(07:26):
a lawsuit over copyright that The New York Times has
lodged against Open Ai, basically saying, hey, if I go
to chant GPT, I can basically get it to replicate
material that we own that is paywall that we make
money off of. And how does that play out? Because
that again could reshape how this industry really works. I
also think last point here the anti AI crowd cannot
(07:50):
be under sold. This technology is not like you know,
an electric vehicle or a new smartphone or a smartwatch,
where people you know launch it and it either does
well or it doesn't do well. But it's kind of
just a product at the end of the day. This
is an emotional products that is out there on the Internet,
and just as many advocates there are for it, there
(08:11):
are as many AI detractors, some of whom are pretty loud.
Something that has gotten a lot of attention in the
last week on certain parts of the Internet is slop evader,
which is an AI anti AI browser extension that you
can install on your computer which basically takes you back
to the version of the Internet before chat GPT launched,
so you can avoid all of the AI generated content
(08:34):
that has flooded the Internet.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
ABC News tech reporter Mike Debuski with us on a
week that March the three year anniversary since the launch
of chat GPT. Mike really appreciate the time and insight.
Thanks so much, of course, Ryan, take care The Ryan
Gorman Show on news radio WFLA. Follow us on Facebook
and Instagram at Ryan Gorman Show, and find us online
at ryangormanshow dot com.
So it's been three years since the launch of chat GPT,
the AI platform that I know all of you have
heard so much about, and to talk about the impact
that platform has had, how much it's grown, and what
to watch for from it moving forward, I want to
bring in ABC News Technology reporter Mike Debuski. Mike really
appreciate it taking a few minutes to come on this morning.
(00:21):
So I would say it's been within the past year
that I've really started to use chat GPT on a
regular basis. But let's go back three years ago when
this first launched. Was there a sense that this could
be as revolutionary of a tool as it seems to
have the potential to be.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, if you look at the original blog post announcing
chat GPT's launch that was posted by OpenAI on November thirtieth,
twenty twenty two, it's pretty modest, right. It doesn't feel
like the announcement of a technology that's going to reshape
our economy and Silicon Valley and various other trees around
the world. Opening Eye did bill this chatbot as an
(01:04):
AI model that can answer follow up questions, admit mistakes,
challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate results, but it was
ultimately a pretty technical post obviously that belied a very
influential future for chat gpt, though the technology launched a
frenzy of hype, obviously a lot of speculation on Wall Street,
(01:24):
but also dire warnings about this technology, including its ability
to potentially spread disinformation online, to displace jobs, to infringe
on copyright, to allow children to cheat on assignments in school,
and to exacerbate mental health crises among people ran. These
are all questions that were still contending with in twenty
twenty five, three years after the launch of chant GPT.
(01:47):
But doubtless it is hugely, hugely popular. You are not
alone in using chant gpt regularly. When one month after
this product launched in November of twenty twenty two, Change
was being used by a million people per week according
to the company. Today that figure is eight hundred million,
according to CEO Sam Altman.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So when people hear about AI, they think about Google,
Gemini their commercials for that, and plaud their commercials for that.
And then of course you've got X and Rock and
you've got Microsoft Copilot that they might be familiar with
from you know, work programs. Was chat GPT really the
(02:29):
start of all of this.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
In some ways, yes, it was very much the first
public facing, easy to access and easy to use generative
AI chatbot that took root in you know, American culture
and then sort of world culture. But it's worth mentioning
that Google, kind of open Ey's main competitor in this space,
has been working on generative AI technology for way longer
(02:55):
than open ai has been around. In fact, the T
in chat GPT is an actual piece of technology. It
stands for a transformer, that's an AI term. It was
created by Google. So that really just does give you
a sort of insight into exactly how influential Google is
in this space. And when we fast forward to today,
(03:16):
you know many for many years now, we've been talking
about how open ai is kind of at the cutting
edge of this, right They're always releasing new models, always
steadily improving their technology, and it kind of woke up
the larger Silicon Valley industry saying, hey, we got to
start working on our own AI stuff. And then you
saw kind of Google come to the table with a
public facing product that you saw, you know, Elon Musk's company,
(03:36):
you know, start to release you know, competing products like
this as well well. Now those established players have caught up,
and Google's latest release, which is called Gemini three, launched
last month to rave reviews people using it for all
kinds of things. Of course, Google can also integrate that
technology into a lot more platforms than open Ai can.
(03:57):
They own Google Search and YouTube and bunch of pixel
phones and so on and so forth. Meanwhile OpenAI owns
none of that, and their latest release, GPT five, nfl
short of expectations when we're talking about benchmark tests. So
it really does sort of underscore Ryan just how competitive
this race still is.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
We're joined by Mike Debuski, ABC News Tech Reporter on
the third anniversary of the launch of Chat GPT. How
much has the platform grown in those three years in
terms of the way it functions and its capabilities.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
So we already talked about how many people use the platform.
Way more people use it now, but they're also using
it more frequently. By July of this past year, people
were sending Chat GPT two point five billion messages per day.
That equates to about twenty nine thousand per second. They
(04:53):
say they have a million business customers now, which is
a big enterprise potential revenue stream for the company, which
remains unprofitable. They're still spending billions more than they actually
make off of subscription services and other corporate partnerships, and
this month they also announced that they're now available in
one hundred and fifty countries, so they are expanding their
(05:14):
reach around the globe as well. Look, it is a
growing technology in a lot of ways, and that cuts
in one direction, meaning you know, hey, they've grown very
quickly in a very short amount of time. It also
means that there's still sort of a nascent technology in
a lot of ways. One thing that has struck me
in talking about this third anniversary of chat GPT is
(05:35):
that a lot of the concerns we had back in
twenty twenty two are still concerns we have today. These
are tools that can still be used to cheat on
homework assignments and have radically reshaped how teachers and education
systems have to think about the tools they give their students.
It still makes things up and hallucinates and deals with
accuracy problems regularly. Even the most advanced models are still
(05:58):
pretty bad at certain things. And of course there are
the darker aspects of this as well. The potential for
these tools to be used at length to exacerbate mental
health crises. Right now, the parents of the teenager who
unfortunately took his life after an extended conversation with chat
gpt I've lodged a lawsuit against open ai, which is
(06:20):
expected to move forward within the next year. That is
something to keep a very close eye on because it
could reshape this industry.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Final question for you, moving forward as we head into
twenty twenty six, what will you be looking for from
open ai and chatchept as it continues to grow and evolve.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, I think that the competition factor here is really
acute for open Ai. Again, they've been striking major deals
with the likes of Nvidia and Oracle and others to
build out the infrastructure needed to support this technology, which
is very energy intensive and requires very expensive computing hardware.
That is continuing to raise eyebrows, particularly on Wall Street
(07:03):
where speculation of an AI bubble continues, that we are
maybe overinflating the value of these companies to a degree
that just can't be sustainable, especially if the economic wins
in the American economy are to shift. I'm also going
to be paying a close attention to some of the
legal challenges that the company is facing. We already mentioned
the lawsuit over mental health problems, but there is also
(07:26):
a lawsuit over copyright that The New York Times has
lodged against Open Ai, basically saying, hey, if I go
to chant GPT, I can basically get it to replicate
material that we own that is paywall that we make
money off of. And how does that play out? Because
that again could reshape how this industry really works. I
also think last point here the anti AI crowd cannot
(07:50):
be under sold. This technology is not like you know,
an electric vehicle or a new smartphone or a smartwatch,
where people you know launch it and it either does
well or it doesn't do well. But it's kind of
just a product at the end of the day. This
is an emotional products that is out there on the Internet,
and just as many advocates there are for it, there
(08:11):
are as many AI detractors, some of whom are pretty loud.
Something that has gotten a lot of attention in the
last week on certain parts of the Internet is slop evader,
which is an AI anti AI browser extension that you
can install on your computer which basically takes you back
to the version of the Internet before chat GPT launched,
so you can avoid all of the AI generated content
(08:34):
that has flooded the Internet.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
ABC News tech reporter Mike Debuski with us on a
week that March the three year anniversary since the launch
of chat GPT. Mike really appreciate the time and insight.
Thanks so much, of course, Ryan, take care The Ryan
Gorman Show on news radio WFLA. Follow us on Facebook
and Instagram at Ryan Gorman Show, and find us online
at ryangormanshow dot com.
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