ChatGPT to Add Mental Health Features, Will Handle Over 2.5 Billion Daily Queries
OpenAI has announced the addition of mental health-focused features in its popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT. One of the key updates includes a break reminder that will notify users when they have been chatting for more than 30 minutes. The feature will prompt messages like “Is this a good time to take a break?” to encourage users to avoid burnout during long sessions. With this move, OpenAI aims to focus on the well-being of its 500 million weekly active users while preparing for its next major upgrade, GPT-5.
Along with this, ChatGPT is set to become more intelligent and empathetic. Instead of giving simple yes or no answers to complex and emotional questions about relationships, career decisions, or personal challenges, ChatGPT will now provide well-balanced responses in a calm tone, explaining the pros and cons of each possible option to help users make better decisions.
Currently, ChatGPT processes more than 2.5 billion prompts every day worldwide, out of which 330 million come from the United States. In December 2024, this number was just 1 billion per day, which means usage has more than doubled in six months. According to an Axios report, ChatGPT now answers around 912.5 billion queries annually, while Google processes nearly 5 trillion searches each year. OpenAI spokesperson Rob Friedlander has confirmed these figures.
India is also witnessing a massive surge in ChatGPT usage, especially among students and young professionals aged between 25 and 34 years. Many Indian students use ChatGPT to complete homework, understand complex topics, and enhance learning. Currently, ChatGPT has approximately 500 million weekly active users, most of whom access the free version. India and the U.S. remain the largest markets with 16% of the traffic each, followed by Brazil, Canada, and France.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and a group of tech entrepreneurs with the mission to develop safe and human-centric artificial intelligence. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, OpenAI is known for innovations in Generative AI and large language models. ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, is an AI chatbot designed to answer a wide range of questions using pre-trained data from the internet. Although it cannot provide completely new information beyond its training, it processes available data to deliver accurate and helpful responses.
