State of AI in 2022 — The Year ChatGPT Arrived

Last updated: June 2026. Reviewed by Report AI editorial. Every figure on this page is linked to its primary source.

STATE OF AI 2022 — KEY DATA POINTS

~50%

Organizations using AI
flat for 5 years
McKinsey 2022

Nov 30

ChatGPT launches
research preview
OpenAI

100M

ChatGPT users in 2 months
fastest-ever app growth
UBS / Reuters

For most of 2022, AI was a back-office technology used by about half of organizations and dominated by traditional machine learning. Then, on 30 November 2022, OpenAI quietly released ChatGPT as a research preview — and within two months it had reached an estimated 100 million monthly users, the fastest consumer-app uptake on record (Reuters, citing a UBS analyst note). 2022 was the year generative AI became commercially viable and reset the entire trajectory of the field.

Executive summary

• Adoption flat at ~50%. McKinsey’s State of AI 2022 found organizational AI adoption had hovered near 50% for five years, with little movement during 2022 itself.
• Generative AI breakthroughs. Stable Diffusion (Aug 2022), DALL·E 2 (April 2022), and ChatGPT (Nov 2022) all launched in a single year.
• ChatGPT becomes the inflection point. ~100M monthly users in two months made it the fastest-growing consumer app ever — setting up the breakout that followed in 2023.
• Investment cooled. 2022 global private AI investment fell from its 2021 peak amid the broader tech downturn, per Stanford HAI’s AI Index 2023.

Adoption stayed flat — for now

McKinsey’s The State of AI in 2022 reported that organizational AI adoption had “stabilized” at roughly 50% after climbing from ~20% in 2017. The technologies in use were predominantly traditional machine-learning models for fraud detection, demand forecasting, and customer-service routing — not the generative tools that would dominate the following years (McKinsey).

The generative-AI breakthroughs

Even before ChatGPT, 2022 was a banner year for generative AI. DALL·E 2 entered limited access in April; Stable Diffusion open-weights launched in August; Midjourney exited closed beta over the summer. Image generation went mainstream months ahead of text. Then on 30 November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT as a free research preview — and the conversation shifted permanently. A UBS analyst note widely cited by Reuters estimated ChatGPT reached ~100 million monthly active users in January 2023, the fastest consumer-app uptake on record.

Investment cooled from its 2021 peak

Stanford HAI’s AI Index 2023 found that global private AI investment fell in 2022 versus 2021, mirroring the broader tech-funding pullback. The 2022 number would later look small — by 2024 corporate AI investment hit $252.3B — but it set the baseline against which the post-ChatGPT surge would be measured (Stanford HAI, AI Index 2023).

Frequently asked questions

How many organizations were using AI in 2022?

About 50% — a level that had been roughly flat for five years — according to McKinsey’s State of AI in 2022.

When did ChatGPT launch?

OpenAI launched ChatGPT as a free research preview on 30 November 2022.

How fast did ChatGPT grow?

A UBS analyst note widely cited by Reuters estimated ChatGPT reached ~100 million monthly active users by January 2023 — about two months after launch, the fastest consumer-app uptake on record.

Data sources & methodology

1. McKinsey QuantumBlack — The State of AI in 2022 — and a Half Decade in Review.
   Verified data points: ~50% organizational AI adoption stable for five years.
   Source: mckinsey.com
2. Reuters / UBS — ChatGPT user growth, February 2023.
   Verified data points: ~100M MAU within two months of launch.
   Source: reuters.com
3. Stanford HAI — AI Index Report 2023.
   Verified data points: Global private AI investment declined in 2022 vs. 2021.
   Source: aiindex.stanford.edu

Related pages: State of AI: Year-by-Year Timeline · State of AI in 2024