ChatGPT Is Losing Ground to Claude and Gemini

No, ChatGPT is not the only assistant worth tracking anymore, and treating it that way now means missing nearly half the picture. New industry data shows ChatGPT’s share of AI prompt volume has been cut from dominant to roughly even with the rest of the field in just six months. Claude and Gemini picked up almost all of the difference.

Is ChatGPT Still the Only AI Assistant That Matters?

It’s still the biggest single assistant. It’s no longer the only one that counts. Comscore’s Q2 2026 AI Intelligence Report found ChatGPT’s share of total AI prompt volume fell from 70% to 50% between January and June 2026. That’s still real traffic — ChatGPT reached 168 million desktop conversations in June 2026 — but it’s half the share it held at the start of the year.

Some of this is people using more than one assistant rather than switching entirely. Multiplatform visitation rose to 99 million users, up from 59 million a year earlier. Prospective clients aren’t settling on one AI tool. They’re asking the same question in more than one place.

Where Is the Traffic Actually Going?

Mostly to Claude and Gemini. Claude’s share of AI prompt volume rose from 2% to 11% over the same six months. Its desktop conversations climbed from 1.1 million in October 2025 to nearly 40 million in April 2026, before leveling off at 22.3 million in June 2026 — about 20 times its October 2025 level.

Gemini’s growth is bigger in raw numbers. Its share rose from 17% to 30%, and its desktop conversations grew from 8 million to 89 million over the past year, with a similar slowdown showing up in early summer.

And more people are showing up to an AI assistant at all. By June 2026, 35% of desktop users and 29% of mobile users had visited an AI assistant, up from 25% and 12% in January 2025. The pool of people asking AI tools questions is growing, and it’s splitting across more tools as it grows.

Why Does This Matter for a Law Firm’s Client Research?

Because the person typing “best [practice area] attorney near me” into an AI assistant doesn’t check which one leads the market first. They ask whichever one is already open on their phone or laptop. If your firm’s AI-visibility work only checks whether ChatGPT names you, you have no idea what the Claude answer says, or the Gemini answer — and those two now account for roughly four in ten prompts, by share of volume.

That gap doesn’t show up gradually, either. A firm can look fine on one engine and be invisible on another in the same week, simply because each assistant draws on different sources and weighs them differently. Checking only one tells you nothing about the other two.

We call this metric Citation Share: the percentage of AI-assistant answers in your market that name your firm. A Citation Share measured on ChatGPT alone was already a partial view. This data makes the gap bigger, not smaller.

What Should a Small Firm Actually Track?

Citation Share across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini — not one engine standing in for all three. The report itself attributes ChatGPT’s falling share to people spreading their usage across more tools, not to ChatGPT losing users outright. So the point isn’t to drop ChatGPT tracking. It’s to stop treating it as the whole picture.

Does This Mean ChatGPT Is Losing Users?

No. The data points to people adding assistants, not abandoning ChatGPT. Its raw conversation volume is still large. Its share of total volume is smaller because the total pool of AI usage, and the number of tools splitting it, both grew.

Should We Stop Tracking ChatGPT?

No. It’s still the single largest assistant by volume. The point is to stop tracking it alone. A firm that only measures ChatGPT visibility is measuring a shrinking fraction of where its prospective clients are actually asking questions.

Is This Legal Advice?

No. This post is informational commentary on third-party industry data about AI assistant usage. It is not legal advice, and nothing here should be read as guidance on your firm’s specific marketing, advertising, or compliance obligations. Talk to your own counsel about those.

How Do We Find Out Where Our Firm Stands Right Now?

Start by checking where your firm’s own site and visibility currently stand. Run a free SiteScan to see what it finds.