Last year, I reported on the hype building around popular AI-powered tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google's Gemini, and more. Interestingly, statistics showed that very few people are using AI in their day-to-day lives, and that the hype around the technology is being somewhat misconstrued for actual public interest.
Fast forward to this year, a different tone has seemingly been set as AI scales greater heights and models become smarter and more intuitive with reasoning capabilities, and more recently, a memory to remember previous chats.
Reports by aitools.xyz seemingly clear the air about generative AI being a fad. The research firm analyzed usage data across 10,500+ AI tools in February 2025.
Unsurprisingly, OpenAI continues to top the charts, potentially due to its 2-year runway in the AI landscape that allowed it to build and develop ChatGPT uncontested, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
The report detailed that ChatGPT saw over 52x more visits than Microsoft Copilot in February 2025. Perhaps more interestingly, ChatGPT's daily visits for February stood at 173.3 million, which stacked miles ahead of Microsoft Copilot's 98.9 million monthly traffic.
While ChatGPT continues to reign over Microsoft Copilot, the latter recorded a 6811% year-over-year growth in 2024, indicating that the tool is gaining traction and attracting interest among users.
Last year, during Microsoft Ignite, the Redmond giant announced that "nearly 70% of the Fortune 500 now use Microsoft 365 Copilot." While we don't have a ballpark figure for what this would translate to, it shows that there is some interest in the tool and it's being broadly adopted across organizations to boost productivity.
Copilot has been trailing ChatGPT from the jump
Towards the end of 2023, Microsoft launched Microsoft Copilot's mobile apps to compete against ChatGPT on an even playing field. Despite shipping the apps with free access to DALL-E 3 image generation technology and GPT-4, mobile users seemingly preferred ChatGPT over Copilot, even if it meant that they needed a monthly subscription to access the features Microsoft offered for free.
A separate report by Appfigures detailed that Microsoft bringing Copilot to mobile didn't dent ChatGPT's installs or revenue. Microsoft Copilot's slow adoption was attributed to poor promotion practices, citing a lack of search ads to boost the app's discoverability on the App Store and Google Play Store.
Elsewhere, Microsoft received backlash over Copilot's recent overhaul, with most users indicating that it has degraded the platform's user experience. Some Microsoft insiders indicated that the update was "a step backward."
However, Microsoft shifted gears at its just-concluded 50th anniversary celebrations with a special Copilot event, shipping flagship features, including Copilot Vision, memory, and Copilot Avatar. It'll be interesting to see if these new additions drive interest toward the tool, ultimately growing its user base.
Interestingly, a report suggested that the top complaint to Microsoft's AI division was that Copilot isn't as good as ChatGPT. However, Microsoft dismissed the claim, indicating that ChatGPT isn't better than Copilot; you're just not using it as intended.
