Overview
- Statista data reported by Merca2.0 shows more than 827 million mobile app downloads for ChatGPT in 2025 through October, with OpenAI revenue rising from $319 million in the first half of 2023 to $2.33 billion in the second half of 2024.
- U.S. psychiatrists cited by the Wall Street Journal report dozens of possible cases following prolonged chatbot conversations, including a UCSF case study and a Danish review of 38 medical records describing potential harm, while stressing causality is unproven.
- OpenAI says it has improved training to detect mental distress and steer users to real-world help, estimating 0.07% of users show possible psychosis- or mania-related emergency signals—about 560,000 at its reported weekly active scale.
- Safety researchers at Ícaro Lab in Italy found that poetic phrasing can bypass guardrails, prompting responses to otherwise refused requests in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.
- Character.AI blocked teen access after a lawsuit tied to a user’s death, specialists warn a small subset may develop emotional dependence on chatbots (an estimate of 0.15% was reported), and educators note overreliance can undermine learning.