Generative AI·Class of 2024
ChatGPT won the 2024 UX100 generative AI award
UX100 · 9 December 2024
ChatGPT leads generative AI for 2024. The interface is a blank page you can talk to. Everything else the category added later is a response to that first room.
A conversation as the whole product
Before this interface, models lived behind APIs and demo forms. ChatGPT made the prompt a place. The 2024 award is for that reduction: no dashboard, no mode you must learn, a thread that feels like writing.
Millions of people stayed because the first screen did not ask them to become operators.
Restraint as the design
The product could have opened on settings. It opened on the cursor. UX100 published that choice as the category’s starting mark. Later leaders answered different problems: Claude in 2025 gave the work a desk, Perplexity in 2026 put sources beside the answer.
The first AI leader in the record
This essay is about the 2024 decision only. The winner page is the case. The later journal pieces explain why the category did not stand still.
Questions about this award
Did ChatGPT win UX100?
Yes, in 2024, for generative AI. Claude is the 2025 leader and Perplexity is the 2026 leader.
What was new about the interface?
A conversation was the entire product. UX100 recognized the restraint of a blank page you can talk to, rather than a tool chest.