One in three people now use generative AI tools
A new report on digital trends has found that one in three people globally now use generative AI tools, with 3.24 billion active users worldwide. This represents a 57.2 percent increase in the past 12 months, with 1.2 billion new users added.
It found that ChatGPT remains the market leader in generative AI, with twice as many monthly active users as its nearest rival.
Other platforms, such as Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude, are also making significant gains, with Gemini’s mobile app user base increasing fourfold over the past year. Active users of generative AI tools have grown to 3.24 billion – equivalent to 38.9 percent of the global population.
The typical internet user has increased the time they spend on social media and online video platforms by 3.8 percent over the past year, reaching an average of 19 hours and 18 minutes per week. YouTube captured the greatest share of total global social media time, closely followed by WhatsApp and Instagram. When measuring average time spent per active user, TikTok leads with 1 hour and 55 minutes per day.
Social media user identities now stand at 5.81 billion, equivalent to 69.9 percent of the global population. The global total increased by 2.7 percent over the past year, thanks to the addition of 151 million new user identities.
They move across news, social platforms, mobile apps and, increasingly, AI assistants.”
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Mobbie Nazir, Global Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at We Are Social, added that “the data in Digital 2027 proves that we are experiencing a fundamental shift in how people behave online. With social media use reaching 5.8 billion and gen AI woven into the daily habits of over a third of the world, the competition for attention is fiercer than ever.”
According to the report, the typical online adult now relies on an average of 5.8 different channels to find new brands, and digital ad spend increased by 8.7 percent over the last year, with social media up 18 percent, and influencer ad spend increasing by 15 percent.
The report also notes that internet users have reached 6.15 billion, meaning 73.9 percent of the global population is now online, and that online adults are still 74 percent more likely to say they visit search engines when researching brands than they are to visit an AI platform.
Online Habits Shift
The report highlights how the rise of AI and native mobile apps is reshaping the traditional internet. Across the world’s top 10,000 web domains, total monthly web traffic has declined by more than 10 percent since the public launch of ChatGPT. The total time spent using the web has fallen by 11.2 percent in just the past 24 months.
Digital 2027 is a full 900-page report covering the entire online ecosystem. It features data from GWI, Similarweb, Statista and more. Other key highlights include a varied marketing mix, global internet penetration, and channels with influence.
