November 2022 - November 2025
AI Timeline
Journey through the major events since ChatGPT revolutionized AI accessibility in November 2022
November
ChatGPT Launch
OpenAI releases ChatGPT powered by GPT-3.5 as a free research preview, marking a watershed moment in AI accessibility
December
ChatGPT Goes Viral
ChatGPT gains over 1 million users within 5 days of launch
Midjourney v4 Released
Midjourney v4 released with improved image generation
Stable Diffusion Updates
Stable Diffusion 2.0 and 2.1 launched by Stability AI
January
100 Million Users
ChatGPT surpasses 100 million users in just 2 months, becoming the fastest-growing consumer app in history
February
ChatGPT Plus Launch
OpenAI announces ChatGPT Plus subscription ($20/month) offering priority access
Bing AI Integration
Microsoft announces ChatGPT-powered features coming to Bing
Bing Chat Mobile Preview
Microsoft releases AI-powered Bing Chat for mobile preview
Meta Releases LLaMA
Meta releases LLaMA language model as open-source for research
March
ChatGPT API Launch
OpenAI introduces ChatGPT API for developers; early adopters include Snapchat, Quizlet, Instacart
GPT-4 Release
OpenAI releases GPT-4 with multimodal capabilities (text and image inputs), marking major advancement in AI capabilities
Baidu Ernie Bot
Baidu releases Ernie Bot, China's ChatGPT competitor
Google Bard Launch
Google opens access to Bard chatbot based on LaMDA
AI Development Pause Letter
Open letter signed by tech leaders calling for 6-month pause on advanced AI training
Midjourney v5 Launch
Midjourney v5 launched with significant improvements
April
Data Controls Added
OpenAI adds data controls allowing users to opt out of training data inclusion
Italy Lifts ChatGPT Ban
Italy lifts ChatGPT ban after OpenAI meets privacy demands
ChatGPT Plugins Launch
OpenAI releases ChatGPT plugins, GPT-3.5 with browsing, and GPT-4 with browsing (ALPHA)
Adobe Firefly Beta
Adobe releases Firefly image creation model (beta)
May
200+ Plugins Available
ChatGPT Plus users gain access to over 200 plugins
ChatGPT iOS App
OpenAI launches ChatGPT iOS app worldwide
Senate Testimony
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifies before Senate on AI regulation
Bing Powers ChatGPT
Microsoft announces Bing will power ChatGPT web browsing
Midjourney v5.1
Midjourney v5.1 released
Bard Upgraded to PaLM 2
Google announces upgrade to Bard with PaLM 2, expanding to 180 countries
June
Midjourney v5.2
Midjourney v5.2 launched with enhanced features
July
ChatGPT Android App
OpenAI launches official ChatGPT app for Android
Claude 2 Released
Anthropic releases Claude 2 with 100,000 token context window (75,000 words)
LLaMA 2 Public Release
Meta releases LLaMA 2 open-source to general public in various sizes
Stable Diffusion XL 1.0
Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 released
August
ChatGPT Enterprise
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Enterprise with unlimited GPT-4 access and enterprise-level security
September
DALL-E 3 Integration
ChatGPT integrates with DALL-E 3
Voice & Image Capabilities
Voice and image capabilities launched for ChatGPT mobile apps
October
DALL-E 3 Released
DALL-E 3 released with improved image generation
Adobe Firefly 2
Adobe releases Firefly 2
November
Custom GPTs Announced
OpenAI announces Custom GPTs, allowing users to create specialized GPT versions
Sam Altman Crisis
Sam Altman fired and then reinstated as OpenAI CEO after dramatic board crisis
GPT-4 Turbo
GPT-4 Turbo announced with 128K context window and knowledge cutoff extended to April 2023
December
Stable Diffusion XL Turbo
Stable Diffusion XL Turbo released (one-step real-time generation)
Midjourney v6
Midjourney v6 launched
Gemini Pro in Bard
Google upgrades Bard to Gemini Pro in limited areas
Grok AI Launch
X Corporation launches Grok AI chatbot for paid subscribers
January
GPT Store Launch
OpenAI launches GPT Store for discovering custom GPTs and introduces ChatGPT Team
Stable LM 2
Stability AI releases Stable LM 2 with up to 12 billion parameters
New Embedding Models
OpenAI releases text-embedding-3-small and text-embedding-3-large models
Stable Diffusion 3 Announced
Stability AI announces Stable Diffusion 3 (gradual rollout to waitlist)
February
Bard Becomes Gemini
Google's Bard officially rebrands to Gemini
Sora Announcement
OpenAI announces Sora, groundbreaking text-to-video model
Model Context Protocol
Anthropic announces Model Context Protocol (MCP) - a universal interface for AI tools
Gemini 1.0 Ultra
Google launches Gemini 1.0 Ultra for select developers
March
Claude 3 Family
Anthropic releases Claude 3 family (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus) with meta-cognitive reasoning
Inflection-2.5
Inflection AI releases Inflection-2.5 achieving 94% of GPT-4 performance with 40% of training compute
Jamba Released
AI21 Labs unveils Jamba with 256K context window
Stable Audio 2.0
Stability AI releases Stable Audio 2.0
Grok-1.5V
X Corporation releases Grok-1.5V with image recognition
April
Plugins Discontinued
OpenAI announces discontinuation of ChatGPT plugins in favor of custom GPTs
Mixtral 8x22B
Mistral AI launches Mixtral 8x22B (141B total, 39B active parameters)
LLaMA 3 Released
Meta releases LLaMA 3 in 8B and 70B sizes (open-source)
Microsoft Phi-3-mini
Microsoft releases Phi-3-mini (3.8B parameters, mobile-capable)
Adobe Firefly 3
Adobe announces Firefly 3 for image creation
May
GPT-4o Launch
OpenAI announces GPT-4o (omni) with native multimodal capabilities and faster processing
Google I/O AI Showcase
Google I/O showcases major AI advancements
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Anthropic releases Claude 3.5 Sonnet with major improvements in coding and reasoning
Meta Chameleon
Meta introduces Chameleon multimodal model
Google AI Overviews
Google announces AI Overviews for search
Apple Intelligence
Apple announces Apple Intelligence for its devices
June
Stable Diffusion 3 Medium
Stability AI releases Stable Diffusion 3 medium version
Runway Gen3 Alpha
Runway introduces Gen3 Alpha for video generation
Gemma 2
Google announces Gemma 2
Gemini 1.5 Upgrade
Google increases Gemini 1.5 token limit to 2 million
Copilot+ PCs
Microsoft announces Copilot+ for dedicated AI PCs
July
GPT-4o mini
OpenAI releases GPT-4o mini
Llama 3.1
Meta releases Llama 3.1 in multiple sizes including 405B parameters
Mistral Large 2
Mistral AI releases Mistral Large 2 (123B parameters)
AlphaProof & AlphaGeometry 2
Google DeepMind unveils AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2
SearchGPT Launch
OpenAI launches SearchGPT
Midjourney v6.1
Midjourney v6.1 released
August
Advanced Voice Mode
Advanced Voice Mode rolled out for ChatGPT with natural real-time conversations
Flux 1.1 Pro
Flux 1.1 Pro released
September
Meta Movie Gen
Meta unveils Movie Gen
Pika Video 1.5
Pika introduces Video Model 1.5 with Pika Effects
October
Adobe Firefly Video
Adobe announces Firefly Video
Stable Diffusion 3.5
Stable Diffusion 3.5 released
Claude 3.5 Updates
Anthropic launches Claude 3.5 Sonnet (new version) and Claude 3.5 Haiku
Recraft v3
Recraft v3 released
November
MCP Production Ready
Anthropic introduces Model Context Protocol (MCP) as production-ready
Pixtral Large
Mistral AI launches Pixtral Large
Visual PDF Analysis
Anthropic introduces Visual PDF Analysis in Claude
December
o3 Preview
OpenAI previews o3 reasoning model with major performance improvements
Sora Public Release
OpenAI releases Sora for video generation (public access)
o1 Reasoning Model
OpenAI releases o1 reasoning model
ChatGPT Pro
ChatGPT Pro tier introduced at $200/month with unlimited o1 access
Gemini 2.0 Flash
Google launches Gemini 2.0 Flash in beta
Gemini Thinking Mode
Google introduces Gemini-2.0-Flash-Thinking
Veo 2
Google releases Veo 2 for video generation
January
Trump Inauguration
Donald Trump inaugurated as US President
DeepSeek R1 Disruption
DeepSeek releases R1 reasoning model, disrupting AI industry with claimed $6M training cost and performance matching OpenAI o1
o3-mini for Free Users
OpenAI releases o3-mini reasoning model to free ChatGPT users
February
o3-mini Enhanced Reasoning
OpenAI updates o3-mini to show more detailed chain-of-thought reasoning in response to DeepSeek competition
GPT-4.5 for Pro Users
GPT-4.5 (codename Orion) rolled out to ChatGPT Pro users
Alibaba Qwen Updates
Alibaba releases Qwen updates claiming to beat DeepSeek
May
Gemini 1.5 Milestone
Google releases Gemini 1.5 (often called 2.5), first to break 1400 Elo rating on Arena LLM Leaderboard for web development
Claude 4 Family
Anthropic introduces Claude 4 family (Opus 4 and Sonnet 4) with 200K token context and extended thinking mode
Claude Code GA
Claude Code becomes generally available with GitHub Actions support
Gemini 2.5 Multi-Agent
Google releases Gemini 2.5 Pro and Flash as first publicly available multi-agent model with 1M token context
June
Claude 4 GA
Claude 4 becomes generally available via Claude.ai and API
AI Safety Level 3
Anthropic announces Claude 4 operates at AI Safety Level 3
August
OpenAI Open-Source Models
OpenAI launches gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, its first open-source reasoning models, responding to Chinese AI lab pressure
September
700M Weekly Users
ChatGPT reaches 700 million weekly active users
80% Market Share
OpenAI reportedly accounts for 80% of generative AI tool traffic
November
Gemini 3 Launch
Google launches Gemini 3 with advanced multimodal, agentic capabilities and 'Deep Think' mode
Claude on Azure
Microsoft announces Anthropic's Claude models available in Microsoft Foundry (Azure)
Midjourney v7
Midjourney launches v7 with higher image quality and style control
Video Generation Advances
Veo 2.0 (Google), Runway Gen-4, Vidu Q1, and Kling 2.0 released
Qwen 3
Alibaba releases Qwen 3
Phi-4 Reasoning
Microsoft launches Phi-4 reasoning series
Veo 3 & Imagen 4
Google releases Veo 3 for 4K video with natural audio and Imagen 4
Key Highlights
700M+
ChatGPT Weekly Active Users (2025)
3+ Years
Since ChatGPT Launch
50+
Major AI Model Releases
Key Themes & Trends
Model Evolution
From foundation models (2022-2023) to multimodal capabilities (2024) to reasoning models (2025)
Open Source Movement
Meta's LLaMA series, Mistral AI, and DeepSeek drive open-source innovation and cost efficiency
Multimodal Expansion
From text-only to images, voice, video, and seamless integration across modalities
Competition Intensifies
US-China rivalry, open vs closed debate, and rapid innovation cycles reshape the industry