I Looked Into The Most Popular Ai Apps, And The Runner-up Caught Me By Surprise

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• ChatGPT and Gemini are nan apical 2 gen AI platforms.
• Grok's users person increased, while DeepSeek's are down. 
• Vibe coding continues to beryllium a steadily increasing usage of gen AI.

Consumer generative AI products for illustration OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini proceed to toggle shape our regular integer lives. These are nan web products and mobile apps making nan biggest impact.

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Venture superior patient Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) published a study search nan astir celebrated gen AI apps and what we usage them for. ChatGPT and Gemini return nan first and 2nd spots connected nan list, respectively, for astir unsocial monthly visits connected nan web and astir monthly progressive users connected mobile (though it did not specify nonstop numbers -- ZDNET has requested them from a16z). The remainder of nan database suggests shifts successful world gen AI superpowers and why consumers activity circumstantial platforms.

After ChatGPT and Gemini, Deepseek, Grok, Character AI, Perplexity, and Claude inhabit nan adjacent spots for web traffic. AI Gallery, Doubao, Microsoft Edge, Remini, and Baidu AI Search capable nan consequent apical mobile gen AI apps. 

Canva does not look connected nan list, contempt coming successful astatine number 2 aft ChatGPT successful April. The study notes that "products that person added important generative AI features but are not AI native, specified arsenic Canva and Notion, are not included." 

What consumers usage AI for 

According to a16z, which has invested successful a mostly of nan companies listed, these 14 platforms tin pass really consumers are utilizing gen AI. The study narrows user behaviour down to 7 categories: wide assistance (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Poe); companionship (Character AI); image procreation (Midjourney, Leonardo); image and video editing (Veed, Cutout Pro); sound procreation (Eleven Labs); productivity devices (Photoroom, Gamma, Quillbot); and exemplary hosting (Civitai, HuggingFace). The study did not specify percentages for each category. 

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The study noted that mobile app stores cracking down connected ChatGPT copycat apps are making measurement for caller gen AI apps to summation much popularity, including AI Gallery, Wink, YouCut, and Grok. The study besides suggests that nan gen AI web ecosystem is stabilizing -- meaning Google is separating retired its AI domains (Gemini, AI Studio, Google Labs, and NotebookLM) -- which allows for clearer search of its properties' traffic, monthly progressive users, and usage cases. That intends products for illustration Grok, Quark, Qwen3, and Lovable are seeing postulation increases.

ChatGPT competitors are catching up 

Google unsocial has 4 products connected nan a16z list, including Gemini, NotebookLM, Google Labs, and Google AI Studio. Despite ChatGPT's power successful nan wide LLM adjunct category, nan study notes that Google, Grok, and Meta are closing nan gap. 

Grok saw an almost 40% summation successful monthly progressive users aft the release of Grok 4 successful July 2025. DeepSeek knowledgeable a important 22% drop-off successful monthly progressive users. 

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The study besides explores nan summation successful utilizing gen AI for vibe coding, which entails developers utilizing ample connection models to make code, focusing much connected nan application's "vibe" alternatively than nan code's intricacies. The study noted that though this believe is successful its infancy, early information suggests that these platforms, specified arsenic Lovable, Replit, and Supabase, person loyal personification bases.

In nan 5 a16z "Top 100 gen AI user apps" studies published truthful far, 14 platforms person ever appeared successful nan apical 50 web platforms: ChatGPT, Character AI, Civitai, Leonardo AI, ElevenLabs, Gamma, Hugging Face, Veed, Midjourney, Perplexity, Photoroom, Poe, QuillBot, and Cutout Pro.