OpenAI's ChatGPT reached one billion monthly app users in May, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, marking a major benchmark for the consumer AI market even as public sentiment around the technology has become more cautious.
The milestone makes ChatGPT the fastest app ever to hit one billion monthly active users, Sensor Tower said. The company estimated that the chatbot got there about 3.5 years after its launch in November 2022. That pace beat the previous record set by Google Maps, which reached the same level in roughly five years.
The data points to how quickly generative AI has moved from novelty to everyday tool. OpenAI has already said ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly active users across web and mobile in February, and claimed it delivered more web visits and mobile sessions than the next-largest AI platform combined.
ChatGPT remains the clear leader in monthly usage, but competitors are expanding quickly. Sensor Tower said Claude from Anthropic, Google's Gemini, and ByteDance's Doubao and Dola all trailed ChatGPT in monthly users, though several posted strong growth.
Claude's monthly usage rose 640% year over year, while Meta AI climbed 973%, compared with ChatGPT's 62% increase over the same period, according to Sensor Tower estimates. The figures suggest that while OpenAI still dominates in scale, the gap with rivals is narrowing as other models improve and become more widely adopted.
Abe Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower, said gains at competing products have been helped not only by better model performance but also by shifts in market perception.
The report comes at a time when AI faces more skepticism from the public. Recent months have brought vocal criticism from college graduates, warnings from the Pope, and broader concerns from companies and workers about the social effects of rapid AI deployment.
Yousef pointed to OpenAI's February agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense as an example of sentiment affecting usage. Sensor Tower data showed ChatGPT uninstalls jumped 295% day over day on Feb. 28, the day after the Pentagon deal was announced. Around the same time, Claude briefly became the top app in Apple's App Store and outpaced ChatGPT in U.S. downloads for the first time after Anthropic said it would not participate in Pentagon operations.
Still, analysts say negative sentiment is unlikely to reverse AI adoption on a broad scale. Hanno Stegmann, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group's AI and technology unit, said the overall trend in adoption appears to remain strong.
Broader usage data suggests AI is becoming embedded in both work and consumer settings. A BCG poll of about 12,000 frontline workers found that 74% regularly use AI, up 23 percentage points from a year earlier, and more than 40% of regular users said it saves them the equivalent of a full workday each week.
Sensor Tower said even as concerns over privacy, ethics and the social effects of AI grow, consumers are increasingly relying on these tools in daily routines. The United Nations has projected that the global AI market could exceed $4.8 trillion by 2033.
The latest usage figures also arrive as both OpenAI and Anthropic move toward public listings. Anthropic filed its IPO prospectus earlier this month, and OpenAI submitted its confidential IPO filing this week, underscoring how central AI products have become in both tech markets and everyday use.