OpenAI & ChatGPT Are Fading In The News: Media Shifts From Posterchild "OpenAI" To "Generative AI"

A deep dive into media coverage of the emerging world of generative AI suggests a pivot from OpenAI as the posterchild of the generative movement towards a focus on the field as a whole.  Mentions of OpenAI and ChatGPT are fading on mainstream and business television news, as well as online news, mirroring an apparent slowdown in downloads. Mainstream channels appear to have moved on, while business channels and online news appear to be pivoting to more generalized coverage of "generative AI" and "large language models" and away from OpenAI as the centerpiece of their focus. This suggests that the field, at least in the eyes of the media, is rapidly maturing away from an OpenAI-centric landscape and towards a more diffuse arena that has substantial implications for both OpenAI and the AI field as a whole.

The timeline below shows weekly mentions of OpenAI and ChatGPT since last November, showing a surge in January and February of this year, before falling, with a rise in May. General channel coverage remains suppressed, but business channel mentions remain elevated on Bloomberg and CNBC, but not Fox Business:

The streamgraph version makes this fall more apparent:

Business channels have covered the company the most, with CNBC mentioning it before than Bloomberg and Fox Business combined:

Even online news coverage is falling:

However, on an interesting note, business channel mentions of "generative AI" and "large language models" picked up from April, suggesting perhaps a shift to broader discussion of the field as a whole, rather than centered on OpenAI itself, though mainstream channels have not pivoted to these terms, simply pivoting away entirely:

Online news coverage of generative AI and LLMs remains elevated as well: