The competition among leading AI companies is intensifying as they report substantial growth in user engagement. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, announced that its chatbot has surpassed 200 million weekly active users, more than doubling its user base since November 2023.
OpenAI shared this milestone on August 29, highlighting the rapid expansion of ChatGPT since its launch in late 2022. The company attributes this growth to continuous enhancements and the introduction of new features, such as the recently launched GPT-4o Mini model, which has significantly boosted API usage among businesses. Notably, 92% of Fortune 500 companies now utilize OpenAI’s products.
Following OpenAI’s announcement, Meta revealed that its AI features have reached 400 million monthly users, with 185 million engaging weekly. CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that this growth is happening even before the rollout of these features in major markets like the UK, Brazil, and the EU. Meta also reported that usage of its Llama model on major cloud service providers doubled between May and July, following the release of its latest update.
The pressure is mounting for AI companies to demonstrate widespread public adoption, especially given the substantial costs associated with developing and maintaining these technologies. The impressive user statistics may help alleviate concerns from critics who demand quicker revenue generation from AI tools.
Most companies access AI models through leading cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Google, rather than hosting them on their own servers. This trend underscores the competitive landscape, where free models like Llama compete directly with paid services like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
Microsoft, which integrates OpenAI’s technology into its products, reported a 60% increase in the usage of its Copilot chatbot among business customers over just three months. The company stated that Copilot has facilitated the creation of over 12 billion images and 13 billion chats to date, reflecting a 150% increase in activity since the beginning of the year.
Meanwhile, Google, despite its pioneering role in generative AI, has faced criticism for lagging behind competitors in deployment and execution. Recently, Google announced that its Gemini chatbot would be integrated across all its products, including Gmail and Google Maps. The company also reintroduced its AI image generator for Gemini’s premium and business customers, after earlier suspending the generation of images due to inaccuracies.
