Sam Altman hates the name ChatGPT
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- Sam Altman apparently hates the name "ChatGPT," and said no marketer would've ever chosen it.
- "It's a horrible name but it may be too ubiquitous to ever change," Altman told Trevor Noah.
- ChatGPT grew to 100 million monthly active users in just two months after its November 2022 launch .
ChatGPT might be a household name now, but that doesn't mean OpenAI CEO Sam Altman likes the name itself.
"It's a horrible name but it may be too ubiquitous to ever change," Altman recently told Trevor Noah on the comedian's podcast, "What Now? with Trevor Noah."
Altman jokingly asked Noah for alternate name ideas, and wondered aloud if it could be shortened to just "GPT" or just "Chat."
The chatbot is just over a year old now — it first launched in November 2022. ChatGPT's initial launch was described internally as "low-key," so much so that some employees at OpenAI weren't even aware that it had launched at the time, Business Insider previously reported. But by January, it had amassed an estimated 100 million monthly active users by January 2023. And now, as Altman said, it's ubiquitous.
"No marketer ever would've picked ChatGPT as the name for this, but we may be stuck with it," Altman said. "And that might be alright."
On the bright side, "ChatGPT" for sure has a better ring to it than its previous working title, as reported by Time, "Chat With GPT-3.5."