Why Google's AI is unlikely to overtake OpenAI's ChatGPT

Gemini may be the 'better' bot but ChatGPT might be harder to quit

- PARMY OLSON is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology.

It was almost exactly three years ago that ChatGPT made its debut as a humble web demo. It now has more than 800 million weekly users, a number that could cross 1 billion before the year is out. And for the Generative AI boom, it has become a bellwether, one of the fastest-growing online services of all time.

But CEO Sam Altman isn't done. He's ushering ChatGPT into the next phase of growth, juicing engagement by adding new personality features and even erotic content as he scrambles to cover his extraordinary costs. Luckily for him, ChatGPT's domination of the chatbot market looks set to continue even as Alphabet's Google creeps up the rankings.

Google's own ChatGPT clone, known as Gemini, captured the limelight with an update in November that jumped ahead in industry benchmarks, seeming to surpass its rival. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff tweeted that after two hours of testing Gemini 3, he would permanently switch from ChatGPT after using it daily for three years. “The leap is insane,” he tweeted. “Reasoning, speed, images, video... everything is sharper and faster.”