Newly released Similarweb data shows that generative artificial intelligence is no longer just a "new gadget", but is rapidly evolving into a part of the Internet infrastructure, and its importance is approaching that of traditional social networks. In September 2025, the monthly web page visits of various generative AI services totaled approximately 7 billion, a year-on-year surge of 76%, which is close to the volume of mainstream social platforms; the growth of mobile applications is even more exaggerated, with the number of usage sessions increasing by approximately 5 times, and application downloads soaring by 778%.
Over the past 12 months, generative AI-related website traffic has increased by 76%, unique visitors have increased by 58%, and app downloads have increased by 319%.
Amid this wave, ChatGPT still firmly occupies the center of traffic. OpenAI's chatbot website has jumped from about 19 million visits per month in 2022 to about 5.9 billion visits in September 2025. It has entered the top five in the global website rankings, keeping pace with Instagram, which received about 6.5 billion visits in the same month.
Although competitors such as Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude and Perplexity continue to join the battle, ChatGPT still controls nearly 80% of global generative AI website visits, and it is difficult to shake its dominance in the short term. On the US mobile side, the ChatGPT application has approximately 41.3 million monthly active users, of which about one-third are daily active users. However, the monthly active users of Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot are only in the millions, and the daily open ratio is also significantly low, showing that usage habits are still fragmented.
However, judging from behavioral data, chatbots have not yet replaced traditional search engines, but coexist in parallel with them. Similarweb's analysis shows that of the approximately 462 million users who have visited ChatGPT, 95% also use Google search, with overlapping users reaching 441 million, which means that most people will switch between conversational AI and search engines according to different tasks, rather than one-way "migration".
In addition, AI functions are gradually being embedded into the existing Internet ecosystem: for example, Google’s “AI Mode” launched for search quickly reached 100 million visits in the United States with the help of existing traffic, becoming one of the fastest-growing generative AI functions. However, statistics show that more than half of users have only used this function for one day in two months, indicating that the overall usage pattern is still biased toward exploratory rather than high-frequency rigid needs.
In terms of user structure, the audience for generative AI is shifting from “young people’s toys” to a broader mass tool. Although people aged 18 to 34 are still the main user group, with about 1.9 billion people, accounting for 53% of the total users, the fastest growing users are middle-aged and elderly users. People aged 45 and older have risen to nearly 30% of all chatbot visitors, up from about 20% a year ago, with the 45–54 and 55+ age groups both rising to about 14%, while the share of younger groups has declined slightly. This shows that the popularity of generative AI is breaking through age barriers and becoming a universal digital tool across generations. Its infrastructure attributes in information acquisition, work assistance, and even daily life are increasingly prominent.
