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Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini has seen a massive spike in its user numbers, but its usage levels are still way behind rivals like ChatGPT and Meta AI, data revealed in court this week showed.
As of late March, Gemini logged 350 million monthly active users and 35 million daily active users, according to a slide displayed by Google attorneys on Wednesday during day three of a court hearing to determine how to remedy the tech empire’s illegal online search monopoly.
The user data was shown by Google in a Washington, DC, federal courtroom during testimony by Sissie Hsiao, who until earlier this month served as the head of Gemini and led the effort to create the chatbot. The Department of Justice called Hsiao as one of its witnesses in the antitrust case.
Google showed the data as a way to highlight the competitive nature of the generative AI space. Gemini launched in 2023 and though its daily usage has nearly quadrupled from the 9 million daily active users it recorded in October of last year, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta AI were still leading the pack, the slide showed.
The Google slide estimated ChatGPT’s monthly active users at 600 million and Meta AI’s at 800 million.
In a January earnings call, Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg — who testified last week in his company’s own antitrust trial — said that Meta AI’s usage “continues to scale” with more than 700 million monthly active users.
“I expect this is going to be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than 1 billion people, and I expect Meta AI to be that leading AI assistant,” Zuckerberg said.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said this month during a TED interview that ChatGPT had 500 million weekly active users and added that the chatbot was “growing very rapidly.”
“You told me that like doubled in just a few weeks,” head of TED Chris Anderson told Altman. “I said that privately, but I guess…” Altman replied, before trailing off.
“It’s growing very fast,” he added.
While on the witness stand in Google’s antitrust case, Hsiao testified about the fast-changing pace of the generative AI world.
The so-called remedies phase of the court battle between Google and the DOJ kicked off on Monday and it could result in a massive shake up of the $1.8 trillion tech behemoth.
US District Judge Amit Mehta will ultimately determine Google’s fate after he ruled in August, following a 10-week trial, that Google violated US antitrust law in maintaining a monopoly with its online search business.
If the DOJ gets its way, Google could be forced to sell off its prized Chrome web browser, end its exclusive deals with Apple and others to make Google the default search engine on web browsers and smartphones, and share search data with competitors.
Justice Department lawyer David Dahlquist said in his opening statement on Monday that the court must prevent Google from using its search monopoly to dominate the AI market.
Google lawyer John Schmidtlein argued ChatGPT is doing just fine.
The court hearing is slated to run three weeks. The judge is expected to issue his remedies ruling by the end of the summer.
Google has vowed to appeal Mehta’s ruling that declared the tech giant a monopolist.
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