Is the AI race a popularity contest? Depends on who you ask. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is already positioning Meta AI as a frontrunner and promises in a recent earnings report that “Meta AI will be the most widely used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year.”
Although I found the claim surprising and I questioned it on ThreadsAn Instagram engineer joined the conversation with perhaps the most obvious answer: “Distribution!” The LLaMA-based AI can be found on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Facebook recently reported over 3 billion users. Instagram has 2.4 billion, and WhatsApp is also approaching 3 billion. That, my friends, is distribution.
However, Zuckebrger’s statement contained an implication of popularity, such as that people are using Meta AI because they like it. Is Meta AI suddenly positioned to become the most popular AI in this still emerging and highly competitive market? I decided to ask the experts: the AIs.
I started with Meta AI, of course.
Meta AI knows it’s popular, but it’s a bit cagey about it, acknowledging all the factors that play a role in its position in the AI race, including usage, recognition, and personal preference. I was impressed that Meta AI also mentioned its competitors, but I quickly learned that almost all major AIs are well aware of their competition.
Google Gemini doesn’t bother to assess its own popularity; instead, in a very Google way, it focuses on the problem of how to assess popularity. It lists the most well-known ones, adding that “each AI model has its own strengths and areas of expertise, and their popularity can vary depending on the specific use case and user preferences.”
ChatGPT’s thoughtful response comes across as if someone knows the answer (note the italic “most“) but I don’t want to brag. It’s like asking an Olympian if he’s any good at sports. The resistance is just there to make you feel less bad about yourself.
The competition is also mentioned and after explaining how popularity can vary based on various factors, an attempt is made to encourage further discussion and possibly learn which AI I like or use the most.
Microsoft Copilot pretends to be the schoolgirl queen you met who insists she’s not that popular after all, when she’s literally looking for her sash.
It quickly changes the subject, avoiding mention of other AI. Copilot does remind me that it once had a different name, though – so I guess it gets points for being mysterious.
Perplexity’s Claude AI is the overly serious student who (checks notes) can’t find any popularity data and doesn’t really appreciate the comparison or maybe even the question. It does, however, acknowledge that there are other companies with “capable” models.
The problem with judging the popularity of AI and assigning the most-used term to this growing list of generative AI assistants is that AI isn’t a monolith. Sure, we might work with top-tier AI chatbots the most, but we use other kinds of AI platforms, including image generation in Adobe Firefly, a slew of growing tools in Samsung Galaxy AI, and soon Apple Intelligence. They all do different things. How do you compare them?
The reality is that we have to look at individual features. I wonder which are the most used image generators and which are the most used AI image editors. Sora by OpenAI is the most famous video generator, but hardly any consumers have used it yet. As for brand awareness, I bet it wins the popularity contest for video generation, but is not used anywhere.
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For what it’s worth, when I asked people on Threads and X (formerly Twitter) which AI they used the most, ChatCPT was the big winner. I have to assume that at some level, usage equates to popularity.