OpenAI’s ChatGPT has achieved a significant milestone, with 100 million weekly users, according to an announcement made by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during the company’s first developer conference.

This achievement underscores ChatGPT’s remarkable growth since its API release in March, as well as its popularity among a diverse user base that now includes over two million developers and over 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies.

OpenAI’s announcement coincided with the unveiling of new features and models, including a platform designed for creating customized versions of ChatGPT tailored to specific tasks.

“Anyone can easily build their own GPT—no coding is required,” the company wrote in a release. “You can make them for yourself, just for your company’s internal use, or for everyone. Creating one is as easy as starting a conversation, giving it instructions and extra knowledge, and picking what it can do, like searching the web, making images or analyzing data.”

Additionally, OpenAI introduced GPT-4 Turbo, a model with knowledge of world events up to April 2023, capable of processing a substantial amount of text within a single prompt, equivalent to over 300 pages.

“We are just as annoyed as all of you, probably more, that GPT’s knowledge about the world ended in 2021,” Altman said in a speech Monday.

The enhanced capabilities of the GPT-4 Turbo extend its input capacity significantly. In contrast to previous iterations, which were constrained to around 3,000 words, the GPT-4 Turbo now accommodates inputs that can span up to 300 pages, enabling you to request comprehensive book summaries.

Furthermore, GPT-4 introduces support for DALL-E 3-generated AI images and text-to-speech functionality. Additionally, it boasts a selection of six predefined voices, offering you the flexibility to select from a diverse range of voices for receiving responses to your queries.

ChatGPT has earned a reputation as one of the fastest-growing consumer internet applications, garnering an estimated 100 million monthly users in just two months after its initial release nearly a year ago. Comparatively, social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram took significantly longer to reach 100 million users after their respective launches.

In March, Microsoft’s Bing search engine integrated generative AI features powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, surpassing 100 million daily active users, marking a significant milestone more than a decade after its 2009 launch. While ChatGPT’s rapid growth was outpaced by Meta’s Threads, which reached 100 million users within a week of its July launch, Threads’ user base appeared to decrease in the months that followed, with just under 100 million monthly active users as of October.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT continues to maintain its popularity and growth, despite being less than a year old as a public service. While earlier estimates hinted at its widespread usage, today’s announcement from OpenAI provides an official data point to support ChatGPT’s ongoing success.

This announcement also serves as a response to recent media reports suggesting that ChatGPT’s popularity might be waning since its launch in November of the previous year. OpenAI aims to reinforce the platform’s continued strong performance and user engagement with these official statistics.

In a groundbreaking announcement at the Norman E. Borlaug Dialogue organized by the World Food Prize Foundation, the President of the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, revealed that Africa’s food and agricultural industry is projected to be worth an estimated $1 trillion by 2030.

Adesina highlighted the pivotal role of 34 African leaders who have given their endorsement to country food and agriculture delivery compacts. These compacts are instrumental in developing action-oriented plans with clear outcomes, aiming to ensure food security and unlock the full agricultural potential of the continent within a five-year timeframe.

“This development aligns perfectly with the central tenets of the Bank’s Feed Africa strategy, initiated in 2016,” Adesina emphasized, underscoring the Bank’s commitment to driving sustainable agricultural growth across the continent.

Since its inception, the Feed Africa strategy has provided vital support to over 250 million individuals, empowering them with enhanced agricultural technologies that have significantly improved their livelihoods.

Partnerships are playing a crucial role in this initiative, with pledges exceeding $70 billion in support of the food compacts. The AfDB itself is poised to contribute $10 billion over the next five years, further solidifying its commitment to the ambitious goals.

Adesina also highlighted the significance of the Dakar 2 project, which symbolizes the collective determination of African leaders to ensure the continent attains self-sufficiency in food production.

President Sahle-Work Zewde of Ethiopia, who was present at the Borlaug Dialogue, echoed the sentiment of African leaders, stating, “As African leaders, we are all committed to self-sufficiency in food production. Today, Ethiopia, for the first time in its history, is self-sufficient in wheat production and is a wheat exporter to its neighbors.”

Tackling the challenges

Despite these positive strides, challenges remain. Africa, possessing 65% of the world’s untapped arable land, still heavily relies on food imports. There is skepticism regarding the continent’s ability to achieve food self-sufficiency in the near future, given that nearly three-quarters of African governments have reduced their agricultural budgets while increasing spending on arms.

A report by humanitarian organization Oxfam International earlier this year revealed that in the past 12 months, over 20 million more people in Africa have been pushed into severe hunger, equivalent to the entire population of Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe combined. Currently, a fifth of the African population (278 million) is undernourished, and 55 million children under the age of five suffer from severe malnutrition.

Fati N’Zi-Hassane, Oxfam in Africa Director, pointed out, “The hunger African people are facing today is a direct result of inadequate political choices. In a year marred with global inflation and climate disasters, African leaders should have stepped up to their responsibility.”

Chronic underinvestment in agriculture is identified as a key factor contributing to the widespread hunger experienced in 2022. Oxfam reported that 48 out of 54 African governments allocate an average of only 3.8 percent of their budgets to agriculture, with some spending as little as one percent. Additionally, nearly three-quarters of these governments have reduced their agricultural spending since 2019, failing to honor their Malabo commitments to invest at least 10% of their budget in agriculture.

As the global population is projected to reach nine billion by 2050, the urgency for Africa to enhance agricultural productivity becomes increasingly apparent in order to meet the growing demand for food. The AfDB’s ambitious plans aim to address this pressing need, positioning Africa as a leading force in the global food and agricultural industry by 2030.