We couldn’t escape artificial intelligence this year, despite some of our best efforts.
Whether it was students using ChatGPT for help with their homework or actors fretting about digital doppelgängers, AI was seemingly everywhere in 2023.
So, it’s no wonder that some of the most searched for terms over the past 12 months were related to the burgeoning tech.
According to Google, people around the world were looking up ChatGPT more than any other phrase this year. Searches for the AI chatbot created by OpenAI surged more than 2,000 per cent in 2023. Released at the tail end of last year, the conversational chatbot had a jaw dropping 100 million weekly active users at last count.
Just when you’d figured out how to use the digital helper, OpenAI would drop a powerful new update. These days, you can speak to the bot on your phone, get it to edit documents, and even create a personal GPT to share.
While a handful of rivals have tried to steal its thunder, notably Google’s very own Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI, neither appeared on Google’s year-end rankings.
However, not everyone was taken with the tech. As variations of ChatGPT surfaced on a whole host of apps, many of us scrambled to remove them or gave them the cold shoulder.
In the UK, “how to get rid of Snapchat AI?” was the fifth-most-Googled question in the “how to” category.
The private photo-sharing app beloved by teens and 20-somethings released a chatbot in the spring. But, surprise quickly turned to dismay when users learned that the only way to delete it was to pay for a Snapchat Plus subscription. Things took a turn for the bizarre when My AI began posting content, which its owner blamed on a technical glitch.
Still, it wasn’t the only unloved chatbot this year. In November, Discord announced that it was shutting down its experimental, ChatGPT-style bot just months after its launch.
Outside of AI, Google’s search roundup also revealed the shows, games, and films we were all hooked on this year.
With Barbieheimer lighting up the box office, it was no surprise to see Barbie and Oppenheimer topping the film chart. Elsewhere, Happy Valley triumphed over The Last of Us in the TV shows category in the UK.
Finally, the top 10 most-searched for global terms in gaming were: Hogwarts Legacy, The Last of Us, Connections, Battlegrounds Mobile India, Starfield, Baldur's Gate 3, ã¹ã¤ã« ã²ã¼ã (known as Suika Game in English), Diablo IV, Atomic Heart, and Sons of the Forest.
You can view all the topics on Google's Year in Search 2023 here.
