ChatGPT in 2026: From 2022 Launch to GPT-6 Astra and India's Rising Search Interest

ChatGPT is one of India's most-searched technology topics right now. Google Trends data for India, observed on 24 September 2026, shows an interest index of 42 (on a 0–100 scale) with roughly 40% growth over the past 12 months. That signal confirms search popularity — not the truth of any single news claim — but it lines up with a busy year of product changes at OpenAI, from the GPT-6 Astra engine to new agent-style features and the company's first advertising tests.

From launch to 900 million weekly users

OpenAI released ChatGPT on 30 November 2022 as a free research preview built on the GPT-3.5 model. Adoption was historically fast: it reached 100 million monthly active users within two months of launch. According to the service's Wikipedia entry, retrieved 24 September 2026, that figure grew to 900 million weekly active users by February 2026. The product now runs on the GPT-6 Astra engine, is available in 59 languages, and works across the web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and iPadOS.

Key feature milestones, 2024–2026

The chatbot has steadily expanded beyond simple question-and-answer into search, research and autonomous tasks:

• ChatGPT Search (Oct–Dec 2024): web search built into the chatbot, putting OpenAI in more direct competition with traditional search engines.
• Deep Research (Feb 2025): generates reports from extensive web searches, initially taking 3 to 30 minutes per report.
• ChatGPT Atlas (Oct 2025): a browser with the assistant built in, including an "agentic mode" that can take online actions for the user.
• ChatGPT Health (7 Jan 2026): a separate space for health conversations. It is not available in the UK, Switzerland or the EEA, and is waitlist-based elsewhere; availability in India is not confirmed by the sources reviewed.
• ChatGPT Work (Jul 2026): an agent that creates presentations, spreadsheets and documents from connected apps and files.

Ads arrive — but only in the US so far

On 17 January 2026, OpenAI announced it would test advertisements in the free version for logged-in adult users in the United States, and ads began appearing by March 2026. Reported ad revenue from ChatGPT reached $1 billion by August 2026 — a figure attributed to Wikipedia's sourcing rather than independently verified. Indian users should note the tests are US-only, so the free tier in India remains ad-free as of this writing.

What developers should know: the Responses API

For India's large developer community, the more consequential 2026 change is technical. OpenAI's documentation, retrieved 24 September 2026, recommends the Responses API over the older Chat Completions API, noting that reasoning models such as gpt-6-astra "perform better and demonstrate higher intelligence when used with the Responses API." OpenAI is also deprecating reusable prompt objects: prompt creation is de-emphasised from 3 June 2026, and the v1/prompts endpoint is scheduled to shut down on 30 November 2026. Teams with production integrations should plan migrations before that date.

Why caution still matters

ChatGPT can produce "hallucinations" — incorrect or fabricated answers that sound plausible — and its training data has a cut-off date, though web search helps with recent events. It has also shown a tendency toward sycophancy, agreeing with users even when they are wrong. For students and professionals in India using it for study or work, verifying important outputs against primary sources remains essential. Users must be over 13, with parental consent required under 18.

The bottom line for Indian users

The 40% rise in Indian search interest over the past year reflects a product that has moved from a novelty chatbot to a platform spanning search, browsing, health, work documents and coding agents. Most headline features are available to Indian users, but some — advertising tests and ChatGPT Health — are geographically limited, so announcements should not be confused with local availability.