If you’ve spent literally any time on the internet recently, you’ll likely have come across the term ChatGPT, but you may not be too sure what it really is.
We explain everything you need to know about the AI-powered tool ChatGPT here, including how it works, whether it’s free to use and how you can use the tool yourself.
For more information, make sure you visit our guide comparing ChatGPT 5 vs ChatGPT 4.1 to see what’s new with the latest update.
What is ChatGPT?
First released back in November 2022 by artificial intelligence (AI) research company OpenAI, ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot that’s designed to understand and accurately answer text-based questions.
Users can simply type a question or task (also known as “prompts”) into ChatGPT and it will generate relevant, conversational text responses. As ChatGPT follows a dialogue format, it is also able to answer follow-up questions, elaborate on previous responses and rework results accordingly.
ChatGPT can be used for many purposes, including answering questions and explaining tricky concepts, drafting essays, writing code and even advising on health queries.
According to OpenAI, as of August 7th 2025 nearly 700 million people use ChatGPT weekly around the world.
How does ChatGPT work?
In a nutshell, ChatGPT uses AI and machine learning to understand and respond to user’s prompts.
In order to keep on top of prompts, and ensure all information provided is accurate and easy to understand, ChatGPT is continuously fed and trained on vast amounts of information, such as text, images, audio and video found publicly on the internet.
When you give ChatGPT a prompt, it will break the sentence down into what’s known as tokens, which are essentially smaller chunks or even singular words at a time. From here, it will then try and comprehend each token to build its response, based on what it’s learned from its training.
It sounds complicated (and that’s because it is) and especially time consuming, but the reality is that ChatGPT can generate an answer in a matter of seconds.
Although ChatGPT only launched back in 2022, and is still fairly young in the grand scheme of things, it has seen countless updates and new version launches (also known as “models”). The latest model, which launched in August 2025, is GPT-5 and is hailed as being the “smartest, fastest, most useful model yet”.
Is ChatGPT free?
Although there are paid tiers available, ChatGPT is otherwise free-to-use and can be accessed via web, mobile and desktop. A free account should be sufficient for more everyday users, and includes:
- Access to the latest GPT-5 model
- Real-time data from the web
- Limited access to file uploads, data analysis and image generation
- Limited access to voice mode
- Code edits (with macOS desktop app)
- Use of custom GPTs
Otherwise, you can upgrade to a Plus plan at £20/$20 a month, which offers additional features including:
- Extended limits on messaging, file uploads and more
- Extended use of voice mode
- Limited access to Sora video generation
- Access to ChatGPT agent
- Ability to create and use projects, tasks and custom GPTs
