ChatGPT’s prompt share falls to 50% as Gemini, Claude gain ground

ChatGPT's share of total AI prompt volume dropped from 70% to 50% between January and June 2026, according to Comscore's Q2 2026 AI Intelligence Report published Tuesday. The decline marks a rapid fragmentation of the AI assistant market, with Google's Gemini Alphabet Inc. ↘ 3.58% nearly doubling its share from 17% to 30% and Anthropic's Claude climbing from 2% to 11% over the same period.digiday+1

The erosion in ChatGPT's dominance does not reflect a decline in its usage. ChatGPT reached 168 million desktop conversations in June 2026 and grew its multiplatform visitation to 99 million from 59 million a year earlier. Instead, the overall AI assistant market is expanding, and consumers are spreading their activity across a wider set of tools.stocktitan

A Splintering Market

"The message isn't that ChatGPT is winning the race. The message is AI assistants collectively are becoming a consumer behavior layer, and consumers are developing different relationships with different assistants," said Smriti Sharma, Comscore's chief analytics and technology officer.digiday

Gemini's desktop conversations rose from 8 million to 89 million over the past year, driven in part by its integration into Google, Android, and Workspace. Claude's desktop conversations surged from 1.1 million in October 2025 to nearly 40 million in April 2026, though that figure settled to 22.3 million by June — still roughly 20 times its October 2025 level.firstpost+2

In June 2026, 35% of desktop users and 29% of mobile users visited an AI assistant, up from 25% and 12% respectively in January 2025. Mobile adoption is now outpacing desktop growth.stocktitan+1

Implications for Publishers and Brands

The fragmentation extends beyond standalone chatbots. Google desktop searches displaying an AI Overview grew from 25.8% in July 2025 to 39.4% in June 2026, raising fresh concerns about referral traffic to publishers.digiday+1

The report also revealed a gap between being sourced by AI and being cited. Tripadvisor, for example, accounts for 61% of travel sourcing by AI platforms but just 21% of citations. "Being used by AI is not equal to being visible in AI," Sharma said.digiday

Sponsored ads are also beginning to appear inside AI responses. Ads in hotel-related AI search results rose from 6% of prompts with source links in March 2026 to 24% by May 2026.stocktitan

What Comes Next

Michael King, founder and CEO of content marketing agency iPullRank, compared the current moment to the early social media era. "Gemini is growing because it's bundled into Google, Android and Workspace, so it's picking up mainstream users who never went looking for a chatbot. Claude is growing among knowledge workers and technical audiences. Those are different people asking different questions," he told Digiday.digiday

For publishers and marketers, the takeaway is that optimizing for a single AI assistant is no longer sufficient. "Clicks are no longer as important as the influence that is happening through the AI chatbots for the decision-making process," Sharma said.digiday