A New Era in Conversational AI

On November 30, 2022, OpenAI, a prominent US company with headquarters in San Francisco, released a publicly available version of a chatbot called ChatGPT that transformed the world of Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ignited what has come to be known as “The Conversational AI Arms Race.” Within just five days of its launch, ChatGPT had acquired a million users, and within two months, it was estimated to have 100 million active users. In February 2023, Microsoft, having invested heavily in OpenAI, launched a version of its Bing search engine powered by the technology behind ChatGPT. Google responded in March 2023 by releasing its own AI-powered chatbot called Bard. Others followed, including Anthropic, funded initially by Google and subsequently by Amazon, with a chatbot called Claude, as well as major Chinese tech firms, such as Baidu and Alibaba.