OpenAI's official app ChatGPT was launched on the US App Store and topped the App Store free list overnight.
According to the data from Sensor Tower, on May 19, ChatGPT ranked No. 4 in terms of revenue in terms of productivity, and No. 94 in the App Store overall list.
It is conceivable that this data will continue to climb in the future.
OpenAI's landing on the iPhone this time also brings up a very interesting question:
In the past few months, ChatGPT and GPT-4 have been evaluated as the iPhone moment of AI, and the access to Plugins is also considered to be ChatGPT entering the App Store era.
This kind of close alignment with Apple's collective cognition more than ten years ago seems to imply that Apple's ecology of software and hardware will be completely subverted by OpenAI's ground-breaking new technology.
But why did OpenAI honestly develop an App for the iPhone (and the Android version that I don't know when it will be launched)?
Because the meaning of iOS and Android is no longer the mobile revolution that changed the world more than ten years ago, they mean the entire digital world, no matter the positive side or the dark side.
01
100 million vs 4.95 billion
The world is big
According to well-known statistics, two months after ChatGPT was released, its monthly active users reached 100 million, making it the fastest-growing app ever. In April 2023 alone, the ChatGPT website received 1.8 billion visits.
That might seem like a lot of data, but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to the entire Internet.
Nearly a year before ChatGPT was released, the total number of global Internet users reached 4.95 billion, about 60% of the global population.
Among them, more than 90% of users access the Internet through mobile phones.
In other words, there are more than 4 billion Apple and Android users.
(In 2021, Google I/O announced that there were more than 3 billion active Android devices; in January 2021, Cook announced that there were more than 1 billion active iPhones.)
The data can prove that the mobile terminal almost (90%+) represents the channel for all human beings to access the digital world.
However, a few days ago, the official way for users to access ChatGPT was only on the Web side—you must open the official website of OpenAI to use this paradigm-revolutionary product.
OpenAI's vision reads: To ensure that the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) can benefit all mankind.
So of course, the mobile terminal is the channel it cannot avoid. This has nothing to do with whether mobile devices with touch interaction will be subverted in the future. This is an objective reality at present.
02
how is the product doing
Delicate and simple
In the past two days, we have heard countless praises for the official app, which mainly focus on these aspects:
animation effects;
vibration feedback;
More voice input than the web page;
Recharging Plus is even more convenient.
The product is indeed very delicate.
@Junyu, a self-proclaimed designer, mentioned to Founder Park that details such as vibration feedback and animation show that OpenAI's product design team is very attentive. "It doesn't take a lot of effort, but designers need to know how to innovate."
Meituan's large-scale model application product manager @嘉儿的动画堡 also commented: "The user experience of the ChatGPT APP is full", "The refreshing feeling brought by the vibration of the mobile phone when GPT speaks words, and the silky smoothness of sliding out the history on the right. In this native Development is about to become extinct, and the era when UED was reduced to a drawing interface and document writing tool is really a renaissance.”
On the other hand, in terms of functionality, the ChatGPT official application is very "simple".
Even though GPT-4 and the speech-to-text Whisper model can be used, it still does not have the beta feature (including the web browsing mode Browsing and plug-in mode Plugins) that has just been fully supported on the web side.
That is to say, from a functional point of view, if you have not recharged as a Plus member, the official app experience is actually the same as it was from November last year to the present; Plus members have no difference from the web experience before the beta feature was opened.
As for voice input, this is a function supported by all mainstream input methods, including the input methods that come with Apple and Android.
GPT-4 is still limited in quantity (seems to have been adjusted), and for apps whose frequency is much higher than that on the web, the feeling of "not enough" will be more obvious.
Compared with the large number of "shells" and third-party tools that support APIs on the market, ChatGPT for iOS has no TTS, no quick custom prompt, no access to Siri, and no way to set font size and format.
(Browsing and plug-in modes can be activated by opening a conversation on the web side, and then syncing the chat history. But, huh? Think again?)
In addition to the just-launched App, there is another fact, is the web browsing and plug-in mode of the beta feature really easy to use?
(@Junyu, who claims to be a designer, once again told Founder Park that the ecological distribution mechanism of Plugins is ingeniously designed. "In fact, there are quite a lot of details in the ChatGPT web version. The whole company is fast but not rough.")
Browsing and Plugins make ChatGPT look like an all-in-one product, but at present, their experience is very elementary, text query and text feedback are quite inefficient modes - compare new Bing and support Various mobile apps of Plugins.
We have had a lot of discussions about the UI in the past, including live broadcasts and articles, so I won’t go into details here.
ChatGPT itself is not a mature product, it is still a "test product", at least from the point of view that OpenAI only started recruiting iOS developers last month, it is far from completing the "productization" step.
So why launch an app that doesn't have a good (or not quite) experience?
One of the reasons, as mentioned above, is that there are 4 billion mobile users. The channel of the official app store can provide OpenAI with more interaction and more data feedback.
There is another reason: there are too many fake ChatGPT mobile products in the name of AI chatbots.
03
fake
too much, too much money
The help page of the OpenAI official website has a question:
"Where can I download the OpenAI ChatGPT iOS app on the Apple App Store?"
This is really a serious question.
Yaniv Markovski, head of engineering support and community at OpenAI, posted a link to the App Store in a reply and said:
If you are searching, you can find it quickly by using the query term "openai chatgpt official" to make sure you are downloading the official app made by us.
On the night when the ChatGPT official app was released (Beijing time), people flocked to the App Store in the US region, but found that they could not search for the official app no matter what.
(Now the App Store has put the official app at the top of the relevant keyword search. On the night of the release, there was a search in the Apple App Store sorted by release time, where you can see that the ChatGPT developed by OpenAI was ranked in the top. One hour later, on the second page.)
Instead, there are a large number of fake ChatGPT chatbots, most of which use keywords such as AI, chat, chatbot, and are designed in a style similar to the ChatGPT logo.
If you try to search for keywords such as ChatGPT or OpenAI in the app stores of various regions and platforms, you should find such products, which can be described as "countless".
Behind these seemingly inferior products is a business worth tens of millions of dollars.
Genie - AI Chatbot, which ranks in the top search, the data platform gives a series of competing products, of which at least 4 ChatGPT-like products have a monthly income of more than one million US dollars, and there are a lot of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The following picture is just tip of the iceberg.
Take the top-ranked Genie as an example. Its developer AppNation is a real App factory. Its products include screen recording software, battery doctor, slow motion video editing, watermark editor, PDF Maker, WiFi analysis, mobile phone cleaning, etc. .
Their mission is: "Conquer the app world. Our products are used and loved by millions of people around the world."
On its official website, AppNation introduces its own technology: Our belief is not to repeat ourselves. Our in-house technology makes building an app as easy as a puzzle.
According to SensorTower's data, last month Genie - AI Chatbot was downloaded more than 2 million times in the App Store worldwide, with a revenue of more than 1 million US dollars, ranking 12th in the productivity category.
On the App Store in China, Genie has repeatedly ranked among the top 100 in total revenue.
Google Play Store screenshot, the description of "Similar apps" on the right is very accurate
As of now, when the OpenAI official app occupies the first place in the free list, under the form, "Chat with Ask AI" ranks 13th, "AI Chatbot: Open Chat AI" ranks 25th; "ChatOn" ranks 30th...
04
Leek GPT
Your curiosity, their motivation
Last month, about 4 million netizens used a counterfeit ChatGPT product on the desktop and Chrome plug-in, resulting in information leakage. Their Facebook account was renamed Lily Collins (a famous British actor), and their profile pictures were replaced.
To make matters worse, they were unable to log into their accounts, and malware stole their user credentials, bypassing two-factor authentication and taking control of their accounts.
The app pops up from a Facebook ad, and users click on it to log in with their Facebook account.
It is unknown why the authors of the malware used the name Lily Collins.
On the global Internet, you can see "how to use ChatGPT" questions and answers everywhere. Related Chrome plug-ins, App Store applications, and desktop software that are easier to install emerge in endlessly.
They can't wait to take advantage of users' curiosity about revolutionary AI and do everything possible to get in front of users.
According to a survey report released by Sophos, a British cybersecurity company, "FleeceGPT-like mobile apps are targeting people interested in AI to earn cash."
"FleeceGPT" is their name for this type of product, which can be translated into "wool GPT" or "leek GPT".
The report pointed out that leek GPT products have the following characteristics:
Their functionality is freely available through mobile systems or other online resources;
They try to get users to sign up for a short free trial, which then converts into a hefty subscription fee, cashing in on unsuspecting users;
They use features like intrusive ads to make the free version almost unusable in order to drive users to pay.
Take a product called "Open Chat GBT" as an example, which claims to support GPT-3.
After opening and using it, it will pop up a lot of advertisements. As long as the user speaks three sentences, it will lock the conversation and remind the user that a paid subscription is required to unlock and continue to use.
Paying starts with a three-day free trial, followed by a $10 monthly subscription, or $30 annual subscription (sounds like a lot of value).
But in fact, many users cannot get the same experience as the free version of ChatGPT even if they pay. I don't understand your question".
They should never intend to understand the user's problem.
This is the new world opened by OpenAI, the hole in the dark side it tore open.
Thousands of products, on Google Play Store and Apple App Store, earn at least tens of millions of dollars a month, and in the overwhelming media publicity, users who have just become a little curious about new technologies.
OpenAI, burdened with profit pressure and mission vision, everything it desires is displayed in a chaotic manner in the mobile application store that "represents the entire digital world".
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