What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a conversational assistant developed by OpenAI and released to the public in November 2022. It wraps the company’s GPT family of large language models in a chat interface, where a user types a request in plain language, the model answers, and the conversation continues within the model’s context window. OpenAI has since added file upload, image generation, web browsing, voice conversation, code execution, and connections to outside tools and data.
ChatGPT is a product rather than a model; the same underlying models are available to developers through OpenAI’s API for building their own applications. ChatGPT is sold in free and paid tiers for individuals, plus team and enterprise plans with administrative controls and different data handling terms.
Why ChatGPT matters
ChatGPT’s release made generative AI an everyday tool for the public and set the expectation that software should answer questions in conversation. For most companies it also arrived unofficially, through staff pasting internal documents into personal accounts. That pattern, known as shadow AI, is why an AI acceptable use policy and a sanctioned alternative are usually the first governance steps a company takes.
What to watch for
- Data handling differs between consumer and business plans; check whether your conversations may be used for training and where they are stored.
- Answers can be wrong or invented, so treat output as a draft to verify, especially figures, citations, and legal or medical content.
- For regulated data or steady volume, compare a hosted assistant against a private AI deployment that keeps data inside your environment.