The AI race is heating up as OpenAI and Meta flex muscles

The pressure is mounting for AI companies to demonstrate widespread public adoption of ChatGPT-style chatbots, given the substantial costs associated with delivering these technologies. To address this, major AI firms are releasing new usage statistics to showcase the significant growth in their services as competition intensifies in the generative AI sector.

This data aims to address the concerns of critics who are calling for faster and more substantial revenue generation from AI chatbots and similar tools. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, recently reported a remarkable surge in its chatbot’s popularity, with active monthly users surpassing 200 million since November—a more than twofold increase. Additionally, OpenAI disclosed that 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies are now utilizing its services. The company, led by CEO Sam Altman and supported by Microsoft, is keen to highlight this growth amidst increasing scrutiny.

In a similar vein, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced that the use of AI features across its platforms has surged to 400 million monthly users, with 185 million engaging on a weekly basis. Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, noted that this growth is occurring even before the company has launched its AI features in key markets such as the UK, Brazil, or the EU. He also mentioned that the usage of Meta’s Llama AI model on major cloud services has doubled between May and July following its latest update.

AI models are predominantly accessed via leading cloud service providers—Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Google—rather than being hosted on individual company servers. Llama, Meta’s free model, competes directly with paid offerings from OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

Microsoft, which integrates OpenAI’s technology into its AI tools, reported a 60 percent increase in the usage of its Copilot chatbot by business customers over the past three months. The company highlighted that Copilot has been used to create over 12 billion images and conduct 13 billion chats, with usage up by 150 percent since the beginning of the year.

Despite being a pioneer in developing generative AI, Google has faced criticism for its slower pace in deploying AI and occasional missteps. Recently, Google announced that its Gemini chatbot is now integrated across all its products, including Gmail and Google Maps. Additionally, Google has resumed offering its AI image generator to premium and business customers after previously suspending it due to concerns over inaccuracies, such as creating historically incorrect images like Asian Nazis or a Black George Washington.