ChatGPT Reaches One Billion Monthly App Users in May

OpenAI's ChatGPT reached one billion monthly app users in May, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. 5 years after the service launched in November 2022, making ChatGPT the fastest app to reach the milestone. Google Maps had taken around five years after its launch to hit one billion monthly users.

OpenAI stated in February that ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly active users across web and mobile platforms and claimed it had more than six times the monthly web visits and mobile sessions of the next largest AI platform. Sensor Tower data showed ChatGPT led in monthly users, followed by Google's Gemini, ByteDance's Doubao and its overseas variant Dola, and Anthropic's Claude.

Monthly usage of Claude rose 640 percent year-on-year while Meta AI rose 973 percent, compared with ChatGPT's 62 percent growth, Sensor Tower said.

Abe Yousef, Sensor Tower's senior insights analyst, said rival models gained on tangible improvements and more positive market sentiment. U.S. Department of Defense to deploy its models on classified Pentagon networks, Sensor Tower data showed.

U.S. downloads for the first time. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission one week before OpenAI submitted its IPO filing on Monday afternoon.

On Friday, Anthropic called for a pause in global AI development, stating that if systems are capable of fully building their own successors, the ways to secure them, monitor them, and shape their behavior all grow much more important. Pope Leo published a letter on May 25 warning of widening inequality and public safety concerns driven by AI demand.

A CNBC survey published in May showed workers have avoided using AI for moral, environmental or privacy reasons.