[matusp]

To be honest there were several chatbots before ChatGPT, eg Galactica by Microsoft, and it had not seem so promising. Similarly, ChatGPT was originally released as more or less a fun little demo, and the absolute success was surprise for OpenAI as well .

They probably managed to hit certain UX threshold where people start to find the chatting valuable/interesting, but this was really an accidental discovery.

[kridsdale1]

Sometimes virality is a total fluke of the moment. For instance Zoom happened to be what teachers told each other about when lockdowns started.

That could have been webx or meet or whatever.