OpenAI & ChatGPT Timeline: From GPT-1 to GPT-5.1 (2025 Update)

This is a timeline of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the fastest-growing consumer software application in history.

From its humble beginnings to becoming a revolutionary force in tech, we’ll trace its journey and milestones.

Last updated: Nov 12, 2025

A Timeline of ChatGPT & OpenAI

Table Of Contents

2025
2024
2023
2022
2020
2019
2018

2025

Date	Event	Details
Nov 13	ChatGPT	GPT-5.1 Instant & Thinking are rolling out! Blog Post
Nov 05	Sora	OpenAI launches Sora for Android devices. Download
Oct 07	DevDay	Apps in ChatGPT: Chat with apps directly in ChatGPT and build them with the Apps SDK in preview. AgentKit: Build with our toolkit for production-grade agents. Sora 2 in the API: Integrate video generation into your app with our latest Sora model. Codex: Check out new features like a Slack integration, Codex SDK, and enterprise controls in Codex—now generally available. GPT-5 Pro in the API: The smartest model in the API for tasks where precision matters. gpt-realtime-mini: A smaller voice model that’s 70% less expensive than the large model. gpt-image-1-mini: A smaller image generation model that’s 80% less expensive than the large model.
Sep 30	Sora	OpenAI released their latest video generation model, Sora 2. It is more physically accurate, realistic, and more controllable than prior systems. Blog Post
Sep 30	Sora	OpenAI just dropped the Sora iOS app. The “cameo” feature—dropping yourself into a generated video with your likeness and voice—sounds like an entirely new way to communicate with friends.
Sep 25	ChatGPT	OpenAI launches ChatGPT Pulse, a new experience where ChatGPT proactively does research to deliver personalized updates based on your chats, feedback, and connected apps like your calendar. Blog Post
Sep 10	ChatGPT	ChatGPT now supports MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools.
Sep 04	ChatGPT	Projects in ChatGPT are now available to Free users.
Aug 07	GPT-5	OpenAI finally announced GPT-5, their smartest, fastest, and most useful model yet, with thinking built in. Blog Post
Aug 06	OpenAI	OpenAI just released two new open-weight models, gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b! They’re designed for serious reasoning tasks and are available under a permissive Apache 2.0 license. Blog Post
July 30	ChatGPT	OpenAI announced study mode in ChatGPT—a learning experience that helps you work through problems step by step instead of just getting an answer. Blog Post
July 17	ChatGPT	OpenAI just launched ChatGPT Agent, which is a new mode in ChatGPT that can actually use its own computer to get tasks done for you. Blog Post
July 17	ChatGPT	Record mode in the ChatGPT macOS desktop app is now available to ChatGPT Plus users globally.
June 26	OpenAI API	Web search is now available with OpenAI o3, o3-pro, and o4-mini. The model can search the web within its chain-of-thought! Learn More
June 26	OpenAI API	Deep research and Webhooks have been added to OpenAI API.
June 12	ChatGPT	OpenAI is adding more capabilities to projects in ChatGPT to help you do more focused work. Deep research support Voice mode support Improved memory to reference past chats in projects Upload files and access the model selector on mobile
June 12	ChatGPT	Canvas now supports downloads! If you’re writing a doc, you can export it as a PDF, docx, or markdown. If you’re using Canvas to write code, it will export directly to the appropriate file type (e.g. .py, .js, .sql, etc.).
June 10	o3	OpenAI just dropped the price of o3 by 80%
June 07	ChatGPT	ChatGPT just pushed an update to its Advanced Voice Mode for all paid users. It makes talking with the AI feel way more natural.
June 06	ChatGPT	ChatGPT now connects to more of your everyday tools and can even record meetings! This means it can pull in real-time info from your internal sources, like your emails and cloud storage.
June 04	ChatGPT	ChatGPT can now connect to more internal sources & pull in real-time context—keeping existing user-level permissions.
June 04	ChatGPT	Workspace admins can also now build custom deep research connectors using Model Context Protocol (MCP) in beta.
June 04	ChatGPT	OpenAI is rolling out ChatGPT record mode to Team users on macOS.
June 04	CodeX	Codex is rolling out to ChatGPT Plus users today.
May 19	CodeX	Codex is now available in the ChatGPT iOS app! Start new tasks, view diffs, ask for changes, and even push PRs—all on the go. And you can keep tabs on Codex with live activities on your lock screen, or pick things up again when you’re back at your computer.
May 16	CodeX	OpenAI just dropped Codex, an AI software engineering agent that handles tons of coding tasks for you. Blog Post
May 14	ChatGPT	GPT-4.1 will be available directly in ChatGPT starting today.
May 09	ChatGPT	ChatGPT deep research can now connect to YOUR GitHub repos! Get real-time analysis & cited snippets from your code & docs. Available for Team, rolling out to Plus/Pro. Blog Post
May 02	ChatGPT	End of an era! GPT-4 officially retired from ChatGPT on April 30, 2025, replaced by GPT-4o.
Apr 28	ChatGPT	OpenAI is starting to roll out a better shopping experience in ChatGPT search.
Apr 23	gpt-image-1	OpenAI launched gpt-image-1: their latest and most advanced model for image generation. Now available in the OpenAI API.
Apr 16	o3 & o4	OpenAI just released o3 and o4-mini—their smartest and most capable models to date. OpenAI o3 is a powerful model across multiple domains, setting a new standard for coding, math, science, and visual reasoning tasks. o4-mini is a remarkably smart model for its speed and cost-efficiency. This allows it to support significantly higher usage limits than o3, making it a strong high-volume, high-throughput option for everyone with questions that benefit from reasoning. Blog Post
Apr 15	GPT-4.1	OpenAI just announced GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano in the API. The GPT-4.1 family is a major upgrade over GPT-4o for real-world software engineering work. Blog Post
Apr 11	ChatGPT	Memory in ChatGPT can now reference all of your past chats to provide more personalized responses, drawing on your preferences and interests to make it even more helpful for writing, getting advice, learning, and beyond.
Apr 11	BrowseComp	OpenAI announced BrowseComp, a simple and challenging benchmark that measures the ability of AI agents to locate hard-to-find information. Blog Post
Mar 28	GPT‑4o	GPT-4o got another update in ChatGPT with improvements in following detailed instructions (especially multi-request prompts), tackling complex technical and coding problems, intuition, and creativity, along with fewer emojis. Source
Mar 27	MCP	OpenAI adopts rival Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to data. Source
Mar 26	GPT‑4o	OpenAI has rolled out a new image generation system directly integrated with GPT-4o. This allows the AI to access its knowledge base and conversation context when creating images. Source
Mar 11	Agent	OpenAI released its first set of building blocks that will help developers and enterprises build useful and reliable agents. Source
Feb 28	GPT-4.5	OpenAI is releasing a research preview of GPT‑4.5—their largest and best model for chat yet. Source
Feb 03	ChatGPT	OpenAI introduced Deep Research: an agent that uses reasoning to synthesize large amounts of online information and complete multi-step research tasks for you. Available to Pro users today, Plus and Team next. Source
Jan 31	o3	OpenAI launches o3-mini, its latest ‘reasoning’ model. Free users can now try OpenAI o3-mini in ChatGPT by selecting the Reason button under the message composer. Source
Jan 23	Operator	OpenAI Launched Operator to Automate Tasks. Source

2024

Date	Event	Details
Dec 18	ChatGPT	You can now talk to ChatGPT via phone call or message ChatGPT via WhatsApp at 1-800-ChatGPT without needing an account. Source
Dec 18	o1	o1 in the API comes with support for function calling, developer messages, Structured Outputs, and vision capabilities. See the price.
Dec 16	ChatGPT search	ChatGPT search is starting to roll out to all Free users today.
Dec 14	ChatGPT	You can create projects at http://chatgpt.com and on the ChatGPT desktop app for Windows.
Dec 13	ChatGPT	ChatGPT can now see and hear in real-time.
Dec 11	ChatGPT	OpenAI rolls out ChatGPT for iPhone in landmark AI integration with Apple.
Dec 10	ChatGPT	OpenAI expands ChatGPT Canvas to all users.
Dec 09	Sora	Sora (Sora Turbo) is now available! Source
Dec 05	o1	o1 is now live in ChatGPT now, coming to api soon. Source
Dec 05	ChatGPT	OpenAI announced ChatGPT Pro, a $200 monthly plan that enables scaled access to the best of OpenAI’s models and tools. Source
Nov 21	ChatGPT	GPT-4o model’s creative writing ability has leveled up–more natural, engaging, and tailored writing to improve relevance & readability. Source
Nov 20	ChatGPT	OpenAI launched Advanced Voice Mode on web! Source
Oct 31	ChatGPT search	ChatGPT search is now available to all users. Source
Oct 18	ChatGPT	OpenAI released ChatGPT desktop app on Windows. Source
Oct 12	Swarm	OpenAI has released a new open-source framework called “Swarm” on GitHub. Swarm is an educational framework exploring ergonomic, lightweight multi-agent orchestration. Source
Oct 03	Canvas	OpenAI released Canvas: a new way of working with ChatGPT to write and code. Source
Oct 02	OpenAI o1	OpenAI’s expanding access to developers on usage tier 3 and increasing rate limits (to the same limits as GPT-4o) so your apps can be production-ready. Source
Oct 02	GPT-4o	Developers can now fine-tune GPT-4o with images and text to improve vision capabilities. Source
Oct 02	Model Distillation	Fine-tune a cost-efficient model with the outputs of a large frontier model–all on the OpenAI platform. Source
Oct 02	OpenAI API	Prompt Caching is now available. Our models can reuse recently seen input tokens, letting you add even more cached context into our models at a 50% discount and with no effect on latency. Source
Oct 02	Realtime API	Developers can now build fast speech-to-speech experiences into their applications. Source
Sep 25	ChatGPT	Advanced Voice is rolling out to all Plus and Team users in the ChatGPT app over the course of the week. (Source)
Sep 13	o1-preview	OpenAI introduced OpenAI o1-preview, which is the first of their new series of AI models designed to spend more time thinking before they respond. Source
Aug 21	GPT-4o	You can now fine-tune custom versions of GPT-4o to increase performance and accuracy for your applications. Source
Aug 07	Structured Outputs	Model outputs now reliably adhere to developer-supplied JSON Schemas. Source
July 31	Voice Mode	OpenAI is starting to roll out advanced Voice Mode to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users. Source
July 25	SearchGPT	OpenAI announces SearchGPT, a prototype of new search features, using the strength of their AI models to give you fast answers with clear and relevant sources. Join Waitlist
July 24	GPT-4o	Customize GPT-4o mini for your application with fine-tuning. Available today to tier 4 and 5 users, OpenAI plans to gradually expand access to all tiers. First 2M training tokens a day are free, through Sept 23. Source
July 18	GPT-4o	OpenAI announces GPT-4o mini: the most cost-efficient small model. Source
July 18	OpenAI	OpenAI has trained strong language models to produce text that is easy for weak language models to verify and found that this training also made the text easier for humans to evaluate. Source
June 27	CriticGPT	Finding GPT-4’s mistakes with GPT-4. Source
May 29	ChatGPT	GPTs in the Store are now available to all ChatGPT users, allowing more than 100 million weekly active users to experience custom GPTs. Source
May 21	ChatGPT	You can now connect apps to access files in ChatGPT, like docs and spreadsheets.
May 16	ChatGPT	OpenAI introduced enhancements to data analysis. Source
May 13	GPT-4o	OpenAI releases GPT-4o, a faster model that’s free for all ChatGPT users. Source
Apr 29	ChatGPT	The Financial Times today announced a strategic partnership and licensing agreement with OpenAI, a leader in artificial intelligence research and deployment, to enhance ChatGPT with attributed content, help improve its models’ usefulness by incorporating FT journalism, and collaborate on developing new AI products and features for FT readers. Source
Apr 28	ChatGPT	ChatGPT now has memory across chats. Source
Apr 27	Safety	OpenAI introduced the Instruction Hierarchy, the latest safety research to advance robustness for prompt injections and other ways of tricking LLMs into executing unsafe actions. Source
Apr 26	API	Increasing enterprise support with more security features and controls, updates to our Assistants API, and tools to better manage costs. Source
Apr 11	ChatGPT	The new GPT-4 Turbo is now available to paid ChatGPT users. It’s improved capabilities in writing, math, logical reasoning, and coding. Source
Apr 10	ChatGPT	Majorly improved GPT-4 Turbo model available now in the API and rolling out in ChatGPT. Source
Apr 05	ChatGPT	Developers now have more control over fine-tuning and announcing new ways to build custom models with OpenAI. Source
Apr 01	ChatGPT	Starting today, you can use ChatGPT instantly, without needing to sign-up. Source
Apr 01	DALL·E	You can now edit images you create with DALL·E. Source
Mar 29	Voice Engine	OpenAI announced Voice Engine, which uses text input and a single 15-second audio sample to generate natural-sounding speech that closely resembles the original speaker. Source
Mar 14	Figure	OpenAI signed a collaboration agreement with Figure AI to “develop next-generation AI models” for the robots as it believes they can “help in everyday life.” Source
Mar 08	Security	You can now add extra security to your ChatGPT and API accounts by turning on multi-factor authentication. Set it up in account > settings. Source
Mar 03	Read Aloud	Read Aloud allows ChatGPT to read the answers it generates aloud using an AI-generated voice.
Feb 24	ChatGPT Plugins	ChatGPT plugins have been deprecated by OpenAI. Source
Feb 15	Sora	OpenAI introduced Sora, an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions. Source
Feb 14	Memory	OpenAI’s testing the ability for ChatGPT to remember things you discuss to make future chats more helpful. You’re in control of ChatGPT’s memory. Source
Feb 13	OpenAI	OpenAI’s revenues have surpassed $2 billion (€1.8 billion) on an annualised basis, as the runaway success of its flagship artificial intelligence product ChatGPT puts it among the fastest-growing technology companies in history. Source
Jan 28	GPT	You can now type @ to mention a Custom GPT and add it directly into your conversation.
Jan 26	GPT	A new preview model for GPT-4 Turbo, `gpt-4-turbo-preview`, has been introduced. The latest GPT-4 model is intended to reduce cases of “laziness” where the model doesn’t complete a task. Source
Jan 26	GPT	The cost for `GPT-3.5 Turbo` API access has been reduced, with input prices dropping by 50% to $0.0005 per thousand tokens, and output prices decreasing by 25% to $0.0015 per thousand tokens. Source
Jan 26	GPT	A new GPT-3.5 Turbo model, `gpt-3.5-turbo-0125`, will be released next week. Source
Jan 26	OpenAI	Open AI introduced two new embedding models: a smaller and highly efficient `text-embedding-3-small` model, and a larger and more powerful `text-embedding-3-large` model. Source
Jan 16	OpenAI	OpenAI sets rules to combat election misinformation. It’s been tried before. Source
Jan 10	GPT Store	OpenAI has announced the GPT Store to help you find useful and popular custom versions of ChatGPT. So urce
Jan 10	ChatGPT Team	OpenAI is launching a new ChatGPT plan for teams of all sizes, which provides a secure, collaborative workspace to get the most out of ChatGPT at work. Source

2023

Date	Event	Details
Dec 20	ChatGPT	You can now archive your chats in ChatGPT. Source
Nov 30	OpenAI	Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board. Source
Nov 30	ChatGPT	Happy 1st birthday, ChatGPT!
Nov 21	Voice	ChatGPT with voice is now available to all free users. Source
Nov 17	OpenAI	Chief technology officer Mira Murati appointed interim CEO to lead OpenAI; Sam Altman departs the company. Source
Nov 06	GPTs	OpenAI has introduced GPTs, customizable versions of ChatGPT you can tailor for specific tasks and share. Learn how these new AI assistants work. Source
Nov 06	GPT-4 Turbo	OpenAI Announces GPT-4 Turbo, DALL-E 3 API, Assistants API, and More. Source
Oct 19	DALL-E 3	DALL·E 3 is now available in ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise. Source
Oct 06	DALL-E 3	DALL-E 3 Is Now Available In ChatGPT.
Sep 27	Web Search	The web search is back in ChatGPT! Source
Sep 25	Multimodal	OpenAI is on the brink of releasing revolutionary upgrades to ChatGPT, imbuing it with the capability to perceive and interpret voice and images. Source
Aug 28	ChatGPT Enterprise	OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Enterprise: A More Powerful and Secure Version of ChatGPT. Source
Aug 22	GPT-3.5	OpenAI Opens Up Fine-Tuning for GPT-3.5 Turbo. Source
Aug 22	ChatGPT	Custom Instructions Are Now Available In The EU & UK. Source
Aug 08	GPTBot	OpenAI Deploys Web Crawler GPTBot to Train Next-Generation Language Model GPT-5. Source
Aug 03	ChatGPT	Upload multiple files, suggested prompts and replies, and a whole lot more. OpenAI just released a bevy of updates for ChatGPT. Source
Aug 01	GPT-5	OpenAI has filed a new trademark application for “GPT-5”. Source
July 31	ChatGPT Android	ChatGPT app for Android is now available in all countries and regions. Source
July 27	ChatGPT Android	The ChatGPT app for Android is now available to users in Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, the UK, and South Korea! Source
July 25	ChatGPT Android	ChatGPT for Android is now available for download in the US, India, Bangladesh, and Brazil. Source
July 24	AI Classifier Tool	OpenAI Shutters AI Classifier Tool Amid Low Usage and Accuracy Concerns. Source
July 21	ChatGPT Android	OpenAI Announced ChatGPT for Android. Source
July 20	ChatGPT	OpenAI Introduced Custom Instructions for ChatGPT. Source
July 19	GPT-4	OpenAI’s doubling the number of messages ChatGPT Plus customers can send to GPT-4. Source
July 06	GPT-4 API	GPT-4 is Now Generally Available: What You Need to Know. Source
July 06	Code Interpreter	Code Interpreter will be available to all ChatGPT Plus users. Source
July 04	Web Browsing	OpenAI Disables ChatGPT’s Web Browsing Feature Due to Misuse. Source
June 30	ChatGPT iOS app	ChatGPT on iOS Gets a Major Update with Bing Integration. Source
June 29	OpenAI	OpenAI Sued for Scraping Private Data to Train ChatGPT. Source
June 21	Credentials Leaked	Over 100,000 ChatGPT Credentials Leaked, Users Urged to Change Passwords. Source
June 17	Mercedes-Benz	Mercedes-Benz Brings Human-Like Chatbot to Vehicles with ChatGPT. Source
June 08	ChatGPT iOS app	OpenAI’s ChatGPT app for iOS has received a major update that includes improved iPad support and integration with Apple Shortcuts. Source
June 08	GPT-5	OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed on Wednesday that the company is not currently training GPT-5, the successor to its powerful AI language model GPT-4. Source
May 30	ChatGPT iOS app	The ChatGPT iOS app is now available in 152 countries and regions. Source
May 25	OpenAI	OpenAI Threatens to Leave EU Over AI Act. Source
May 19	ChatGPT For iOS	OpenAI has released an official ChatGPT app for iOS.
May 16	OpenAI	OpenAI CEO Calls for New AI Regulatory Agency to Protect Against Misuse.
May 13	Web Browsing	The web browsing feature in ChatGPT was introduced on May 12, 2023. This feature was initially available only to ChatGPT Plus users.
May 02	OpenAI	ChatGPT creator says there’s 50% chance AI ends in ‘doom’. Source
Apr 28	OpenAI	OpenAI closes $300M share sale at $27B-29B valuation. Source
Apr 28	Back In Italy	ChatGPT back in Italy after OpenAI met regulators’ privacy demands. Source
Apr 19	Data Protection	Germany launches data protection inquiry over ChatGPT. Source
Apr 19	OpenAI	OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that the era of ever-larger artificial intelligence models is coming to an end, as cost constraints and diminishing returns curb the relentless scaling that has defined the field for years.Source
Mar 20	ChatGPT outage	OpenAI took ChatGPT offline earlier this week due to a bug in an open-source library which allowed some users to see titles from another active user’s chat history. It’s also possible that the first message of a newly-created conversation was visible in someone else’s chat history if both users were active around the same time. Source
Mar 14	ChatGPT Plugins	OpenAI implemented initial support for plugins in ChatGPT. Plugins are tools designed specifically for language models with safety as a core principle, and help ChatGPT access up-to-date information, run computations, or use third-party services. Source
Mar 14	GPT-4 Release	OpenAI announced GPT-4, the latest milestone in OpenAI’s effort in scaling up deep learning. GPT-4 is a large multimodal model (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs) that, while less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios, exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks. Source
Mar 01	ChatGPT and Whisper APIs	Developers can now integrate ChatGPT and Whisper models into their apps and products through our API. Source
Feb 07	Google Bard	Google presents its own AI chatbot called Bard, which is similar to ChatGPT. Google CEO Sundar Pichai says that Bard is more powerful and reliable than ChatGPT, as it draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Bard is part of a series of tools based on generative artificial intelligence that Google launches to the market at this time.
Feb 07	Bing ChatGPT	Reinventing search with a new AI-powered Microsoft Bing and Edge, your copilot for the web. Source
Feb 05	Anthropic/Claude	Google is investing $300M in an OpenAI challenger that will take on ChatGPT while focusing on A.I. safety. Source
Feb 02	100 million users	ChatGPT reaches 100 million users two months after launch. Source
Feb 01	ChatGPT Plus	OpenAI launched a pilot subscription plan for ChatGPT. The new subscription plan, ChatGPT Plus, will be available for $20/month. Source
Jan 26	ChatGPT	ChatGPT passes exams from law and business schools. Source
Jan 14	Microsoft	Microsoft in talks to acquire a 49% stake in ChatGPT owner OpenAI. Source
Jan 09	Microsoft	Microsoft is looking at OpenAI’s GPT for Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint. Source

2022

Date	Event	Details
Nov 30	ChatGPT release	OpenAI released a model called ChatGPT, which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. Source
Mar 15	GPT-3.5 release	OpenAI released GPT-3.5.

2020

Date	Event	Details
June 11	GPT-3 release	OpenAI released GPT-3. GPT-3 contained even more parameters (around 116 times more than GPT-2), and was a stronger and faster version of its predecessors.
June 11	OpenAI API	OpenAI released an API for accessing new AI models. Source

2019

Date	Event	Details
Nov 05	GPT-2: 1.5B release	As the final model release of GPT-2’s staged release, OpenAI’s releasing the largest version (1.5B parameters) of GPT-2 along with code and model weights to facilitate detection of outputs of GPT-2 models. Source
Aug 20	GPT-2: 6-month follow-up	OpenAI’s releasing the 774 million parameter GPT-2 language model after the release of our small 124M model in February, staged release of our medium 355M model in May, and subsequent research with partners and the AI community into the model’s potential for misuse and societal benefit. Source
July 22	Microsoft invests in OpenAI	Microsoft invests in and partners with OpenAI to support them building beneficial AGI. Source
Feb 14	GPT-2 Release	OpenAI trained a large-scale unsupervised language model which generates coherent paragraphs of text, achieves state-of-the-art performance on many language modeling benchmarks, and performs rudimentary reading comprehension, machine translation, question answering, and summarization—all without task-specific training. Source