Google's Gemini AI assistant reaches one billion users

SAN FRANCISCO: Google's AI assistant Gemini has reached one billion monthly users, the company's chief executive Sundar Pichai announced on Tuesday. This puts Gemini in the top spot among Google's products, securing its 14th billion-user milestone. Pichai shared the news on social media, stating that Gemini is their fastest-growing product ever.

The achievement comes as Google undergoes a significant restructuring of its AI division. Demis Hassabis, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, recently stepped away from managing Google DeepMind, the lab behind Gemini's development. Several key researchers also departed from the team, including Jeff Dean, who had been with the group for nearly three decades.

However, the company's new flagship model, Gemini 3.5 Pro, has yet to be released, while competitors have launched more advanced models, particularly in generating computer code, a lucrative area in the sector. Google's strength lies in its large user base, as it integrates AI into various aspects of its ecosystem, including search, Gmail, Google Maps, and YouTube.

OpenAI's ChatGPT, launched in November 2022, reached one billion users in July, but the exact figure's monthly or weekly usage remains unspecified. OpenAI's San Francisco-based lab has been at the forefront of the AI boom, building its user base from scratch in under four years. In the face of growing competition, including from China's DeepSeek and San Francisco rival Anthropic, ChatGPT's market share for AI assistants dropped below 50 percent in the first half of the year, according to research firm Sensor Tower, which estimates usage based on company data.