[bigmealbigmeal]

> Chatbots [are] going to remain niche for quite some time.

> iPhone immediately caught on like wild fire.

> I'm not saying there won't be users, but it's a much smaller population.

The facts say you're wrong about this.

The adoption rate for the iPhone was slow. There were only 1.4 million iPhones sold in its first year,[1] whereas there were 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users in its first year.[2]

ChatGPT is not niche, and is not a 'much smaller population'. Right now it has 800 million weekly active users. That's how many iPhones were active in 2017. Are we to say that iPhones were a niche in 2017? It's how many smartphones in general were active at the start of 2012. Are we to say that smartphones were a niche in 2012?

[1] https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/technology--media-a...

[2] https://www.demandsage.com/chatgpt-statistics/

[3] We can go deeper on this data, but these are generally accepted figures, and I have seen no figures that agree with your statements

[yunwal]

> The adoption rate for the iPhone was slow. There were only 1.4 million iPhones sold in its first year,[1] whereas there were 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users in its first year.[2]

The ChatGPT number includes people who paid no money. iPhone adoption was incredibly fast for a paid product

[echelon]

It's my fault for lumping tools like ChatGPT into the bin of "chatbots" that people - mostly kids - are sexting and forming intimate relationships with. In my mind, the latter are "chat" apps.

ChatGPT and Claude have incredible utility, whereas Character.ai-type chatbots are much less certain. I can't fathom trying to spend more than a few minutes talking to them since they have so many shortcomings.

I don't consider ChatGPT a chatbot because my inquiries tend to match my usage of Google Search. It's a search tool.