Digital 2025: AI making gains
At the time of writing, DeepSeek is making plenty of headlines around the world, as AI models vie for supremacy.
Indeed, DeepSeek has topped app download charts in a number of countries over recent weeks – including the United States – relegating previous AI poster child ChatGPT to second place.
However, insights from data.ai reveal that ChatGPT has already built impressive momentum, and the company’s mobile app already averaged more than a quarter of a billion monthly active users between September and November 2024.
ChatGPT was also one of the world’s most downloaded apps during that period, placing eighth in data.ai’s global ranking.
ChatGPT’s mobile app also saw some of the strongest growth across Google Play and Apple iOS app stores, generating the fifth largest quarter-on-quarter increase in downloads of any app between September and November 2024.
And – perhaps more interestingly – the app also saw the third-largest gain in total consumer spend during that period, suggesting that the platform’s users are increasingly happy to pay for ChatGPT’s advanced AI offerings.
Device agnostic
And despite those impressive app stats, ChatGPT appears to enjoy even more success on the web, with both Similarweb and Semrush ranking ChatGPT.com in the world’s 10 most visited web domains at the end of 2024.
Similarweb’s data shows that ChatGPT had an average of 310 million unique monthly visitors between September and November, who generated a combined 3.5 billion visits to the platform’s dotcom domain.
Semrush puts ChatGPT’s unique users even higher though, with the company’s data pointing to more than 560 million unique visitors in November 2024.
And the company offers a higher figure for overall traffic too, with Semrush’s tools reporting 4.75 billion total visits to ChatGPT.com in November 2024 alone.
Who’s winning in AI?
ChatGPT isn’t the only AI tool out there of course, but data up to the end of 2024 – before DeepSeek burst onto the scene – suggests that ChatGPT is still the dominant standalone AI tool.
We’ll come on to explore more integrated offerings in a moment, but first, let’s look at other standalone models.
Clickstream data from Similarweb indicates that Google’s Gemini was the second most popular standalone AI service on the web between September and November 2024, with gemini.google.com attracting an average of more than 60 million unique monthly visitors during that period.
However, that’s still 5 times fewer than the 310 million figure that Similarweb reports for ChatGPT during the same period.
Meanwhile, intelligence from data.ai indicates that Gemini’s standalone mobile app had 30 million monthly active users between September and November 2024, which suggests that its active user base is still eight times smaller than that of ChatGPT.
Microsoft’s Copilot was another top performer towards the end of 2024, but Similarweb reports an average of just 18 million unique visitors per month to copilot.microsoft.com between September and November.
Search-focused Perplexity.ai attracted around 12.7 million unique monthly visitors during the same period, while Claude.ai attracted just over 10 million unique visitors each month.
But while there are plenty of other impressive AI tools out there, it seems that no other standalone service attracted more than 10 million unique monthly visitors by the end of 2024.
Having said that, data.ai’s analysis indicates that the apps of a number of AI powered chatbots – notably Chai and PolyAI (recently renamed PolyBuzz) – now attract tens of millions of active users each month.
However, these services focus primarily on “chatting” with AI-generated characters, and PolyBuzz in particular seems to highlight the “adult” nature of the interactions that its platform’s characters offer.
But to give an idea of how quickly things can change in the world of AI, Similarweb’s tools indicate that DeepSeek.com had just 450,000 unique visitors in October 2024.
That figure rose to 800,000 in November, and then surged to 2.8 million in December – the latest month for which data are available at the time of writing.
But looking ahead, Google Trends data indicates that search interest for DeepSeek increased by a factor of 100x between December 2024 and January 2025, and while that interest fell by 60 percent in just three days from its peak on January 28th to January 31st, we should expect to see DeepSeek deliver some significantly bigger numbers for January 2025.
Integrated AI
Stats for standalone tools don’t offer the most representative view of AI adoption though, because much of the current AI activity happens “behind the scenes”, within broader service offerings.
However, it’s unclear exactly how many people make use of tools like Gemini and Copilot, which is why it’s so difficult to quantify the extent to which AI is already a part of people’s everyday lives.
For example, Gemini is now widely available to the 3 billion users of Google Workspace, and Sundar Pichai has publicly stated that the company is integrating AI models into all of Google’s products.
However, the company hasn’t publicly stated how many people actually make use of Gemini within the company’s portfolio of products.
Elsewhere, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella is equally bullish on AI, noting in the opening paragraph of his remarks about the company’s FY25 Q2 results in January 2025 that “[a]lready, our AI business has surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $13 billion, up 175% year-over-year.”
But once again, the company didn’t offer any clear details of exactly how many individuals are using Microsoft’s Copilot tools.
Meta has been a bit more forthcoming with AI user numbers though.
During the company’s Q4 2024 earnings call, Meta’s CFO, Susan Li, stated that “Meta AI usage continues to scale, with more than 700 million monthly actives.”
However, “Meta AI” is the default service offered when Facebook or Instagram users try to search for anything on those platforms – even if they’re just looking for a friend’s account.
As a result, it’s unclear how many of those 700 million users are actively seeking out AI offerings, and how many are simply looking for the latest memes.
But looking more broadly, products like Canva and Grammarly also continue to integrate AI functionality into their offerings, meaning that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to escape AI’s influence.
And with AI startups capturing almost half of VC funding in the USA in 2024, there’s every sign that the AI bandwagon will continue to gain momentum in 2025.
Having said that though, just before you get swept away by AI hype, it’s worth considering that Yahoo! still attracts almost 100 million more unique monthly visitors than ChatGPT does.
So, while AI will undoubtedly play an important role in shaping the future of tech, it’s always important to maintain a balance of perspective while exploring digital trends.
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