On September 8, 2022, Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history, dies at age 96 at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. The crown passes to her eldest son, now King Charles III.

On November 30, 2022, OpenAI releases the generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT to the public. The chatbot—more sophisticated than popular predecessors found in Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant—soon sets records as the fastest growing technology product in history.