Generative AI: A timeline of advancements

• Nov. 30, 2022

  OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public. The general-purpose chatbot ran on a fine-tuned version of GPT-3.5 and was available at no cost.

• Dec. 5, 2022

  In its first five days, ChatGPT garnered over 1 million users.

• Dec. 10, 2022

  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it’s a mistake to rely on ChatGPT for anything important as it is incredibly limited in a statement posted to X.

• Jan. 9, 2023

  OpenAI asked interested users to sign up for a waitlist to access a premium version of ChatGPT.
  
  Reports begin circulating that Microsoft is looking to invest $10 billion in OpenAI, bringing the startup’s value to $29 billion.

• Jan. 16, 2023

  Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure OpenAI Service as part of its ongoing partnership with OpenAI. Microsoft implemented guardrails, such as content filters, to the service. The company also required developers to apply for access by describing their intended use case or application before receiving approval.

• Jan. 23, 2023

  Microsoft and OpenAI announced the third phase of their partnership and a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment. The deal dominated venture capital activity in Q1, according to PitchBook data.

• Jan. 26, 2023

  Rep. Ted Lieu, D-CA, used ChatGPT to write legislation calling for Congress to increase its focus on AI. It was touted as the first piece of legislation written by AI, and called for the development of safe and ethical AI. 

• Feb. 1, 2023

  OpenAI released a pilot subscription plan, ChatGPT Plus, priced at $20 a month.

• Feb. 3, 2023

  Google and Anthropic announced a similar partnership to that of OpenAI and Microsoft. Anthropic planned to use Google Cloud’s infrastructure while Google had access to Anthropic’s AI capabilities. Google confirmed to CIO Dive it had invested in Anthropic but did not disclose the amount. Reports said it was around $300 million.

• Feb. 6, 2023

  Google unveiled its experimental conversational AI service, Bard. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announces plans to make the company’s language models, LaMDA and PaLM, publicly available.

• Feb. 7, 2023

  Microsoft launched a revised Bing search engine running on a “new, next generation” OpenAI large language model considered more powerful than ChatGPT.
  
  One million people joined the Bing waitlist in the first 48 hours, according to Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi.

• Feb. 14, 2023

  GitHub Copilot for Business became publicly available, using an OpenAI Codex model meant to improve the quality of code suggestions.

• Feb. 16, 2023

  OpenAI, in a bid for transparency, released a portion of its guidelines used to fine-tune ChatGPT. The company said it plans to tweak its technology by improving default behavior and increasing public input.

• Feb. 21, 2023

  AWS partnered with Hugging Face. As part of the partnership, the AI startup said it would use AWS to build its products, allowing AWS customers to customize and fine-tune the tech.

• March 1, 2023

  OpenAI lowered the price of its ChatGPT API, resulting in costs ten times cheaper than the existing GPT-3.5 models. The company also updated its data privacy and retention policy to restrict enterprise data from being used for model training unless organizations opt in.
  
  OpenAI made its Whisper API available to enterprises, with Instacart, Shopify and Snapchat among the list of early users.

• March 6, 2023

  Microsoft announced generative AI capabilities across business applications including CRM and ERP systems through Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot.

• March 7, 2023

  Salesforce added generative AI capabilities to its CRM solution through Einstein GPT, a solution that connects data from Salesforce to OpenAI’s models. Salesforce says ChatGPT will also be available through Slack.

• March 14, 2023

  Google introduced two generative AI capabilities to its cloud services, Vertex AI and Generative AI App Builder. The company also announced plans to add generative AI to Docs and Gmail.
  
  OpenAI released GPT-4 on a limited basis. Early users included Morgan Stanley’s wealth management division to power internal applications for analysts and PwC to generate insights for its legal team.

  March 16, 2023

  Microsoft introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot for its collaboration apps including PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. The company also announced a new capability, called Business Chat, which would allow users to receive responses based on data from their calendars, emails, chats, contacts and meetings.

• March 20, 2023

  OpenAI began investigating an issue within the ChatGPT web interface. Users flagged issues related to seeing unusual chat history. The issue was later identified as a bug in an open-source library, which led to a small percentage of users being able to see the titles of other users’ conversation history.

• March 22, 2023

  GitHub announced its AI-assisted coding tool Copilot will leverage OpenAI’s GPT-4 model.

• March 27, 2023

  Microsoft unveiled AI-powered filters for video conferencing and AI-generated meeting recaps.
  
  Zoom said it will incorporate OpenAI’s large language model to generate chat and email responses.

• March 30, 2023

  The Center for AI and Digital Policy filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, asking the agency to investigate OpenAI, bar commercial releases of GPT-4 and establish guardrails.

• March 31, 2023

  Italian regulators imposed a temporary limitation prohibiting OpenAI from processing Italian users’ data after suspecting the company was breaching the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.

• April 12, 2023

  Italy’s data protection watchdog published a list of demands for OpenAI that if met would result in Italy lifting the ban. One of the requests asked OpenAI to add easily accessible tools to allow users and non-users to obtain their personal data and give users the right to refuse access to their personal data for training the model.

• April 13, 2023

  AWS launched Bedrock, a service that allows customers to build and scale generative AI applications. The service provides customers access to models from AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Stability AI and Amazon’s Titan.

• April 21, 2023

  Google boosted Bard’s coding capabilities and says it can now function as a programming assistant.

• April 25, 2023

  OpenAI added more data privacy guardrails for ChatGPT, allowing users easier access to data settings. Users can turn off chat history and export their data.

• April 26, 2023

  PwC laid out a $1 billion, three-year roadmap to bolster its offerings and train 65,000 employees on AI tools and capabilities.

• April 28, 2023

  Italy lifted its ban on OpenAI.

• May 4, 2023

  The White House convened a group of senior officials and technology executives to discuss the rise of AI and its ethical use. CEOs from Alphabet, Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI joined Vice President Kamala Harris for the discussion.
  
  The White House announced a public evaluation of AI systems. Anthropic, Google, Hugging Face, Microsoft and Nvidia commit to participating in the event later in the summer.
  
  The Administration said the National Science Foundation will launch seven new National AI Research Institutes, fueled by $140 million in new funding.

• May 12, 2023

  ChatGPT Plus users can ask ChatGPT to browse the internet for related information in a beta version.

• May 16, 2023

  
  The U.S. Copyright Office launched an AI initiative to examine the copyright law and policy issues raised by AI, including the scope of copyright in works that AI generates.

• May 30, 2023

  The Center for AI Safety released a short statement equating the risks of AI to pandemics and nuclear war, which is met with support from AI scientists and top executives, including Altman, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

• June 13, 2023

  Accenture unveiled plans to invest $3 billion in AI and double its AI workforce.

• June 21, 2023

  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, announced a legislative framework for AI and urged Congress to act on the rapidly evolving technology.

• June 29, 2023

  PepsiCo began collaborating with the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence to advance research, education, policy and best practices for responsible AI adoption.

• July 3, 2023

  OpenAI pulled back ChatGPT’s browsing capabilities in beta after users’ report issues.

• July 6, 2023

  OpenAI rolled out a tool called Code Interpreter that allows ChatGPT to run code, access files and analyze data for ChatGPT Plus users. The company equated the tool to a very eager junior programmer.

• July 11, 2023

  Anthropic released Claude 2. The updated version of the company’s general-purpose large language model has improved coding skills.

• July 13, 2023

  The Federal Trade Commission reportedly opened an investigation into OpenAI to determine whether the company risked harm to consumers or engaged in unfair or deceptive data security practices.

• July 18, 2023

  Meta released Llama 2, an open-source large language model, available at no cost for research and commercial use. Meta tapped Microsoft as the preferred partner for Llama.

• July 21, 2023

  The White House announced seven leading AI companies have committed to building secure systems and increasing transparency regarding model behavior. Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Inflection pledged to submit their systems to testing by independent experts.
  
  The White House also shared plans to draft an executive order and pursue legislation to promote responsible innovation.

• July 26, 2023

  AWS expanded its Bedrock service to include Anthropic’s Claude 2, Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 and two Cohere models.

• Aug. 8, 2023

  Zoom landed in hot water after under-the-radar changes to its terms and conditions in March allowed the company broad control over user data for its AI projects, spurring concerns. Critics characterized the policy as an invasion of privacy and questioned Zoom’s opt-out options.

• Aug. 11, 2023

  Zoom updated its terms and conditions following feedback related to the company’s use of customer data to train AI products. The terms reflected that Zoom will not use any customer data to train Zoom’s or third-party AI models.

• Aug. 24, 2023

  Meta introduced Code Llama, positioning its newest large language model as a specialized coding tool free for research and commercial use. Meta’s research finds Code Llama scores above OpenAI’s GPT- 3.5 model in a test that measures an AI system’s accuracy on human-written programming questions.

• Aug. 28, 2023

  OpenAI launched ChatGPT Enterprise with additional security and privacy guardrails. ChatGPT Enterprise encompasses the capabilities of OpenAI’s Code Interpreter and runs on GPT-4, functioning as an assistant. Early users of the tool include The Estée Lauder Companies, PwC, Canva and Zapier.

• Aug. 30, 2023

  The U.S. Copyright Office opens a request for comment to determine whether legislative or regulatory action on AI-generated content is warranted. The notice of inquiry published in the Federal Register said the office will use comments it receives to help analyze the current state of the copyright law, identify unresolved issues and evaluate potential areas for congressional action.

• Sept. 6, 2023

  California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to launch a study into the development, use and risks of AI and to develop a process for the evaluation and deployment of the technology across the state.

• Sept. 7, 2023

  Microsoft said it will assume responsibility for potential legal risks involved with using its Copilot services as the generative AI copyright battle heats up.

• Sept. 19, 2023

  Google rolled out Extensions to connect Bard to Gmail, Docs and Drive, letting the tool locate and summarize files and pull relevant information from email threads.

• Sept. 25, 2023

  Amazon said it will invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, gaining a minority stake in the company as part of the investment. Anthropic said AWS will become its primary cloud provider for critical workloads and teams will use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips for model training.
  
  OpenAI launched voice and image capabilities in ChatGPT for Plus and Enterprise users.

• Sept. 27, 2023

  OpenAI revived ChatGPT’s browsing capabilities for Enterprise and Plus users. The feature is connected to Microsoft’s search engine, Bing. The browsing feature moved out of beta Oct. 17.

• Oct. 30, 2023

  President Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at improving the safety, security and trustworthiness of AI in public and private sectors, adding safety requirements for the next generation of the tech.

• Nov. 17, 2023

  CEO Sam Altman departed the company following a deliberative review process by OpenAI's board. The board found Altman was not "consistently candid in his communications" hindering the board's ability to exercise its responsibilities. CTO Mira Murati stepped in as interim CEO.

• Nov. 20, 2023

  OpenAI’s board appointed Emmett Shear, former CEO of Amazon subsidiary Twitch, as the company’s latest interim CEO. Former CEO Sam Altman as well as former President Greg Brockman are set to join Microsoft to lead a newly created advanced AI research team.

• Nov. 22, 2023

  Sam Altman reached an “agreement in principle” with OpenAI to return as CEO to a revamped board. Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo is the only remaining member of the original board of directors, which previously comprised of Chairman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, Altman, GeoSim Systems CEO Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner, director of strategy and foundational research grants at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
  
  The startup appointed former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers and Chair Bret Taylor, former Salesforce co-CEO, to the board.