It took off rapidly but that was hardly because of any hyping and almost entirely due to word of mouth and people actually liking the product, until the press picked up on it.
From what I remember they still had an invite process when they were getting popular and the demand clearly overwhelmed their servers several times, indicating a much bigger response than they expected. If anything I think OpenAI was downplaying the product at the time.
It's had a ton of hype since then of course.
You might not like the discussion around the tech, but to say the tech is hyped like something like NFTs where they had a crazy amount of media coverage and a tiny minority of people actually using it, is just wrong.
Yes, absolutely zero hype.
Not my experience. A whole lot of breathless mentions in media, LinkedIn, and especially top-down company emails. Far fewer cases of people actually liking/using it.
Some people lost their minds over the popular sentiment: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-...