ChatGPT Is the Most-Used AI Chatbot in the U.S.

About half of U.S. adults now use AI chatbots, and ChatGPT remains the tool they reach for most, according to new Pew Research Center data. The findings mark the point at which chatbot use has moved from an early-adopter habit into mainstream behavior, and they show how far ChatGPT's lead extends across a crowded field.

Chatbot Use Has Reached the Mainstream

Pew found that 49% of U.S. adults now use AI chatbots, up from 33% in 2024, in a survey of 5,119 adults fielded in February 2026. About a quarter use these tools every day, a frequency that signals chatbots are becoming part of routine information habits rather than an occasional novelty. Pew published the full results in its Americans and AI 2026 report.

ChatGPT's Lead and the Growth Behind It

Among individual tools, ChatGPT sits well ahead, with 44% of U.S. adults reporting they use it, up from 34% a year earlier. Gemini follows at 24%, then Copilot at 17% and Meta AI at 14%, while Grok, Claude, and Character.ai each sit in single digits. 

The gap shows ChatGPT has become close to synonymous with AI chatbots for the general public, leaving rivals to compete for distribution against a name many people use as a default. ChatGPT's own reach has more than doubled since Pew first asked in 2023, climbing from 18% to 23%, then 34%, and now 44%. Usage also skews young, with adults under 50 about twice as likely as those 50 and older to use ChatGPT, 57% against 28%.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022 as a research preview, and within five days the chatbot had reached one million users, making it one of the fastest-growing consumer applications ever released. Within two months, it had attracted an estimated 100 million monthly active users, a milestone that helped establish generative AI as a widely adopted consumer technology.

The company expanded ChatGPT from a text chatbot into a broader AI platform with web browsing, voice conversations, image generation, coding assistance, file analysis, shopping capabilities, and AI search. That steady expansion has translated into rapid user growth. ChatGPT now serves 900 million weekly active users globally.

From a Reluctant Stance to an Advertising Business

OpenAI’s growing audience also helps explain one of the company’s biggest strategic reversals. For much of ChatGPT’s early life, OpenAI executives repeatedly downplayed advertising as a business model.

In 2024, CEO Sam Altman described advertising as “a last resort.” In November last year, Altman also framed advertising cautiously, describing ads as something the company might try while warning the wrong format could erode user trust.

That position became harder to maintain as ChatGPT’s scale increased. Large language models require billions of dollars in infrastructure, including GPUs, data centers, and ongoing inference costs. Although OpenAI generates revenue from subscriptions and enterprise products, the majority of ChatGPT users continue to use free versions of the service.

Advertising has historically followed consumer attention across nearly every major internet platform. Search engines, social networks, streaming platforms, and retail marketplaces all expanded their ad businesses after reaching significant scale. ChatGPT’s rapid audience growth created similar commercial incentives. 

In early 2026, OpenAI formally entered the advertising market with sponsored placements for Free and Go users in the U.S. while keeping paid subscriptions ad-free. The company said that advertisements would be clearly labeled, conversations would not be shared with advertisers, and sponsored content would not influence ChatGPT’s generated answers.

By May, OpenAI had opened a self-serve ChatGPT Ads Manager to U.S. businesses, with cost-per-click and cost-per-impression buying, conversion tracking, and named agency partners including Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP.

The move from treating ads as a last resort to building a media-buying channel reflects the scale of ChatGPT's audience that Pew is measuring. That audience is now large enough, and increasingly search-like in how it is used, to attract performance advertisers.

Search Is the Dominant Use Case

The way people use chatbots matters as much as how many do. Pew’s findings suggest the biggest shift is not that more people are experimenting with AI. It is that many are beginning to treat AI assistants as a starting point for finding information.

Searching for information is the most common activity, cited by 42% of users, followed by work tasks at 38% among employed adults. Image and video generation trails at 24%, which places everyday information lookup, not content creation, at the center of how the public treats these tools. 

That search-first pattern is what marketers should read closely, because it confirms that a meaningful share of the queries that once started on a traditional search engine are now beginning inside an AI assistant.

Search has historically been one of digital advertising’s most valuable channels. When consumers begin product research, compare services, ask for recommendations, or look for local businesses, those moments often lead directly to purchasing decisions.

While traditional search engines remain the primary destination for many types of searches, conversational AI is increasingly handling the early stages of information gathering. Instead of typing several keyword searches and opening multiple websites, users can ask a chatbot to compare products, summarize reviews, recommend software, explain complex topics, or build shopping lists within a single conversation.

That behavior does not necessarily replace traditional search. Instead, it changes where discovery begins. Some users will still click through to websites before making decisions, while others may continue their journey entirely within AI-powered experiences as those capabilities expand.

Competition Is Intensifying Across AI

Although ChatGPT remains the market leader in Pew’s survey, competition continues to accelerate. Google is integrating Gemini across Search, Android, Chrome, and its broader ecosystem, using its existing distribution advantages to bring AI into products consumers already use daily. Microsoft continues expanding Copilot across Windows, Microsoft 365, and Bing.

Meta has also integrated Meta AI across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, giving it access to billions of existing users. Anthropic’s Claude has gained traction among developers and enterprise customers, while xAI’s Grok benefits from integration with X.

The competition extends beyond attracting users. Each company is competing to become consumers’ preferred starting point for information, recommendations, shopping, and productivity.

What It Means for Marketers

For brands, the data turns AI assistants into a discovery surface that has to be planned for rather than watched. As more product research, comparison, and information lookup happens inside chatbots, visibility increasingly depends on whether a brand's content is surfaced and cited in AI answers, the practice often described as generative engine optimization.

The same scale that makes these tools a research destination is also turning them into ad inventory, which gives marketers a paid route into the answers consumers are already using to search.