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Comment by Aurornis

1 day ago

100 million people didn’t sign up to make that one image meme and then never use it again.

That many signups is impressive no matter what. The attempts to downplay every aspect of LLM popularity are getting really tiresome.

8 comments

Aurornis

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jodrellblank  1 day ago

I think it sounds far more likely that 100M people signed up to poke at the latest viral novelty and create one meme, than that 100M people suddenly discovered they had a pressing long-term need for AI images all on the same day.

Doesn’t it?

  • gretch  1 day ago

    It's neither of these options in this false dichotomy.

    100M people signed up and did at least 1 task. Then, most likely some % of them discovered it was a useful thing (if for nothing else than just to make more memes), and converted into a MAU.

    If I had to use my intuition, I would say it's 5% - 10%, which represents a larger product launch than most developers will ever participate in, in the context of a single day.

    Of course the ongoing stickiness of the MAU also depends on the ability of this particular tool to stay on top amongst increasing competition.

    • oblio  17 hours ago

      Apparently OpenAI is losing money like crazy on this and their conversion rates to paid are abysmal, even for the cheaper licenses. And not even their top subscription covers its cost.

      Uber at a 10x scale.

      I should add that compared to the hype, at a global level Uber is a failure. Yes, it's still a big company, yes, it's profitable now, but I think it was launched 10+ years ago and it's barely becoming net profitabile over it's existence now and shows no signs of taking over the world. Sure, it's big in the US and a few specific markets. But elsewhere it's either banned for undermining labor practices or has stiff local competition or it's just not cost competitive and it won't enter the market because without the whole "gig economy" scam it's just a regular taxi company with a better app.

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  • ben_w  1 day ago

    While 100M signing up just for one pic is certainly possible, I note that several hundred million people regularly share photographs of their lunch, so it is very plausible that in signing up for the latest meme generator they found they liked the ability to generate custom images of whatever they consider to be pretty pictures every day.