AI rivalry has strengthened as software services get hit

The emergent ‘QuitGPT’ movement is an interesting blip in the evolution of the AI sector, where user allegiance is increasingly shaped not merely by technical superiority, but by perceived ethical alignment and institutional transparency.

- SIDDHARTH PAI

Launched recently through initiatives such as QuitGPT.org, it calls for a mass departure from OpenAI’s ecosystem. Its impetus stems from public disclosures of executive political affiliations and campaign funding, alongside broader unease over what critics see as a shift towards more closed research practices.

OpenAI is formidable by any objective metric. As of early 2026, it reported an estimated 810 million monthly active users. At this scale, even marginal defections matter. Some 700,000 subscribers have reportedly signed up to ‘quit’ its ChatGPT and other tools. The deeper significance of this movement, however, lies not in its numbers, but in the structural conditions that make exits feasible. A capability convergence among large language models (LLMs) allows users to quit. For much of 2023 and 2024, OpenAI's GPT-4 maintained a defensible lead in reasoning quality and multimodal performance, which kept switching costs high for enterprises and individual users. But that moat narrowed considerably. Rival models are reaching parity in core zones of competence, letting users switch. Market data reflects this. ChatGPT’s share of the Generative AI chatbot market declined from over 86% in 2024 to about 64.5% by early 2026 (bit.ly/4coOLwQ). While this contraction does not portend collapse , given OpenAI's brand equity and reach, it signals the rise of a multi-polar AI economy.