Threads beat ChatGPT to 100 million users but the AI app is way more consequential

• Zuck can be happy: Threads reached 100 million users faster than ChatGPT.
• But the AI chatbot matters more.

Mark Zuckerberg had cause to celebrate over the weekend as Meta's newest app, Threads, passed the 100 million user milestone less than a week after its launch.

The would-be Twitter competitor is now the fastest-growing app ever, beating ChatGPT, the generative AI chatbot that corporate America hasn't stopped talking about all year.

Does it make it every bit as impressive? Not necessarily.

As far as personal projects born out of spite for fellow tech billionaires go, Threads is immensely successful.

But its leap to 100 million users had a massive jumpstart thanks to its integration with Instagram, whose billion-plus users are actively encouraged to download the new app if they fancy adding a new social-media timesuck onto their devices.

Threads is also a seemingly enticing place to spend time, as the service's ad-less, vitriol-free Threading resembles the friendlier, halcyon days of Twitter before the bird app descended into mayhem under Elon Musk's ownership.

But ultimately, this is just another social media nirvana waiting to become a hell site, if social media's track record is anything to go by. It offers a convenient get-out for Zuckerberg and Musk's ill-conceived cage fight too, as the two can squabble over this instead.

ChatGPT and AI more generally are societal gamechangers, by contrast.

ChatGPT, released to the public November 30, surpassed the 100 million user milestone in January. But its ramifications are bigger than direct user numbers, with the promise of boosting worker productivity, helping businesses save costs, and even upending white-collar industries.

One CEO is reportedly paying over $2,000 per month for all his employees to have a ChatGPT Plus account to see how it could make them more productive. Threads isn't necessary in the same way.

To be sure, both Zuckerberg and Musk are both looking to make big bets on AI.

Earlier this year, Zuckerberg said AI was going to become Meta's single biggest investment. Meanwhile, Insider's Kali Hays reported in April that Musk had purchased thousands of GPUs to build AI applications at Twitter.

ChatGPT has seen its user traffic decline as much as 10%, per data from analytics site Similarweb. That's to be expected as some of the initial hype wears off. ChatGPT's free version also only runs on GPT-3.5, a large language model whose training data only runs to 2021 — anyone using the bot more regularly has likely upgraded to the paid version, or indirectly using it through an enterprise app.

The underlying tech behind ChatGPT is still in its infancy. All the signs suggest it will continue its shakeup of many industries in unforeseen ways. That's not on the cards for Threads.