ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company founded in 2015. The company was initially a nonprofit but transitioned to a for-profit model in 2019. Key founders include Sam Altman, who is also the current CEO, Elon Musk (who was involved early on but is no longer part of the organization), Ilya Sutskever, Wojciech Zaremba, Greg Brockman, and John Schulman

. OpenAI developed ChatGPT based on its series of generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models, with ChatGPT first released as a free research preview in November 2022. The technology behind ChatGPT builds on advances from GPT-1 through GPT-4, enabling it to generate human-like conversational responses

. In summary, ChatGPT is the product of OpenAI's research and development efforts, led by Sam Altman and a team of AI experts, with foundational contributions from the company's co-founders