ChatGPT Now Used by 10% of the World, Says OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

New Delhi: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said around 10% of the world is now using ChatGPT, in a conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson. Though he didn’t provide exact numbers, reports estimate that the platform may have reached 800 million users globally.

“It’s growing really fast,” Altman told Forbes.

OpenAI’s user surge appears to have been turbocharged by its newly launched image generation tool, exclusive to GPT-4o users. 

Since the start of 2024, ChatGPT’s popularity has skyrocketed particularly since December 2024, when it boasted 300 million weekly active users.

According to OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, the new image tool was used by 130 million users, who created over 700 million images in just one week. 

“It has been a very crazy first week for images in ChatGPT,” Lightcap said, adding that India is currently the fastest growing market for the platform.

The Ghibli Art Craze and Copyright Questions

The image generation tool quickly became a global sensation, especially for its uncanny ability to create visuals in a Studio Ghibli-like art style. 

A Ghibli Style trend went viral as users worldwide transformed their photos into anime-inspired artworks.

Even tech leaders like Sam Altman and Elon Musk joined in the fun, but the feature also sparked debate around **copyright and artistic ownership*. Can AI mimic artists' styles ethically? That question remains at the forefront.

Addressing these concerns, Altman acknowledged the potential for future AI models to automatically compensate artists when their work influences AI output. 

Will AI take over human jobs? Altman’s response was nuanced. He said people can either panic or see AI as a new tool that allows them to do more.

“It is true that the expectation of what we’ll have for someone in a particular job increases,” Altman noted, “but the capabilities will increase so dramatically that I think it’ll be easy to rise to the occasion.”