Launch of ChatGPT (OpenAI)
OpenAI releases ChatGPT, a conversational agent based on GPT-3.5, which becomes the fastest-growing consumer application in history.
Key points
- OpenAI opens ChatGPT to the general public on November 30, 2022, built on GPT-3.5.
- The app reaches 100 million users in about two months, a record for adoption.
- Information seeking shifts from a list of links to a single conversational answer.
- The concrete birth of the AEO challenge: being cited and reused in AI-generated answers.
Analysis
The launch of ChatGPT marks the tipping point where generative AI becomes a mass-market use. For the first time, millions of internet users get a direct synthetic answer instead of a page of results to explore, which shifts part of the attention away from classic SERPs.
For brands and publishers, this creates a new territory of visibility: no longer just aiming for a position in Google, but seeking to be mentioned, cited and correctly described in assistant answers. This is the foundation of answer engine optimization (AEO) that shapes all the monitoring of the following years.
What to do
- Regularly audit how ChatGPT describes your brand, your products and your competitors, and correct erroneous descriptions at the source (site, listings, third-party mentions).
- Reinforce factual and well-structured content (definitions, FAQ, figures) that feeds generative answers.
- Set up AI reputation monitoring alongside Google position tracking, to detect changes in what assistants say about you.
The start of the conversational search era. The birth of the challenge of brand visibility in AI answers (AEO).