For years, ChatGPT held a dominant lead in the world of AI chatbots. However, that could now be changing, with Gemini, the company’s biggest competitor, rapidly gaining speed and users.
Following the launch of Gemini 3, the Google-based AI app saw a huge increase in mobile app downloads. At the same time, its global website visits around that time roughly doubled.
These numbers show a rise in new users, but the same can be seen for monthly active users, with this number rising by roughly 30% to 346 million compared to ChatGPT’s rise of 5% to 810 million.
What does this mean?
So, Gemini is the better service now? Not exactly. ChatGPT still remains more popular by numbers, and it is to be expected that a service as popular as ChatGPT will start to see growth slow down at a certain point.
However, this is the first time its lead has been this small. For a long time, ChatGPT was so much bigger than its competitors that it wasn’t even close. To see Gemini’s numbers grow and close in at this rate will be concerning to ChatGPT.
While Gemini is far and above its closest competitor, growth is being seen across the board, with the likes of Claude, Grok and Copilot also becoming more popular.
Google’s dominance across the internet
From a glance, the picture looks clear. Gemini’s app and website is growing and catching up with ChatGPT. However, zoom out again and Gemini’s dominance grows further.
ChatGPT is an isolated system. It is available via its website and app, and in a few other services where it is integrated. Gemini, however, has found its way into Google’s services, including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Worksuite and more.
Even more noticeably, it now has its Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, said in July that more than 2 billion people see Google’s AI-generated search answers (AI overviews) every month.
ChatGPT code red
Clearly, Google’s growth has put the fear into OpenAI, with the company recently announcing a ‘code red’.
This is a period where Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has declared a clear focus on improving the core ChatGPT experience. That means putting all side projects to the side and making ChatGPT smart enough to keep up with Gemini 3.
The result of this should be announced in the coming days, with rumors of GPT-5.2 floating around.
This will be a minor, yet important update to ChatGPT, aiming to match the performance of its competitors. For OpenAI, they will be hoping it will be enough to hold Gemini off from its overtake.
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