ChatGPT hits 1 billion monthly users despite growing AI fears

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has reached an estimated 1 billion monthly app users, becoming the fastest consumer application in history to hit the milestone and extending its lead in the increasingly crowded AI market.

The milestone comes at a time of growing fears and concerns about AI, from job displacement and privacy risks to questions about its broader impact on society. College graduates have jeered mentions of AI during commencement speeches, workers have raised concerns about job displacement and privacy, and voices ranging from the Pope to leading AI researchers have warned about the risks of unchecked development. Yet usage of AI tools continues to climb.

According to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, ChatGPT reached the billion-user mark roughly three and a half years after its November 2022 launch. The firm said that pace surpassed Google Maps, which took about five years to reach a similar scale.

“OpenAI’s ChatGPT reached one billion monthly app users, or MAUs, in May,” CNBC reported, citing recent estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. “Other AI apps including Anthropic’s Claude made triple-digit year-over-year percentage gains in users,” the data company said.

The milestone offers a glimpse into one of the biggest paradoxes in technology today. Public concern about AI is growing. Adoption is accelerating anyway.

OpenAI said earlier this year that ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly active users across web and mobile platforms and generated more than six times the traffic of its nearest competitor.

Competition is intensifying.

Google’s Gemini, ByteDance’s Doubao, Dola, and Anthropic’s Claude are all competing for a share of a market that is becoming central to how people search for information, write content, code software, and complete daily tasks.

Some rivals are growing faster than ChatGPT, albeit from a smaller base. Sensor Tower estimates Claude’s monthly usage jumped 640% year over year, while Meta AI surged 973%. ChatGPT’s user base grew 62% during the same period.

Abe Yousef, a senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower, told CNBC that improvements in competing models and shifts in user perception have helped narrow the gap.

That perception has occasionally translated into user behavior.

ChatGPT uninstallations jumped 295% on February 28, one day after OpenAI announced an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense to deploy its technology on classified Pentagon networks, according to Sensor Tower data.

Anthropic benefited from the backlash. Claude briefly overtook ChatGPT in U.S. App Store downloads after the company publicly declined participation in Pentagon operations.

The rivalry is now moving beyond product adoption and into public markets.

Anthropic recently filed paperwork for an initial public offering. OpenAI followed with its own IPO filing days later, setting the stage for two of the most closely watched technology listings in years.

The surge in AI usage comes as concerns about the technology become more visible.

People Are Growing More Skeptical of AI 

Last week, Anthropic called for a pause in global AI development, warning that increasingly capable systems could become difficult to monitor and control.

“If systems are capable of fully building their own successors, the ways we secure them, monitor them, and shape their behavior all grow much more important,” the company wrote in a blog post.

Those concerns echo warnings from Pope Leo, who recently raised questions about AI’s impact on inequality and public safety. Similar worries have surfaced on college campuses across the United States, where graduates entering the workforce have expressed anxiety about AI replacing entry-level jobs.

Yet the broader trend points in the opposite direction.

Boston Consulting Group found that 74% of frontline workers now use AI regularly, up 23 percentage points from a year ago. More than 40% of frequent users reported saving the equivalent of a full workday each week through AI tools.

“The strong trajectory of AI adoption shows no sign of slowing,” said Hanno Stegmann, managing director and partner at BCG X.

The United Nations estimates the AI market could exceed $4.8 trillion by 2033.

For now, the numbers suggest that public skepticism and AI adoption are moving in the same direction. Concerns are rising. Usage is rising faster.