OpenAI reportedly no longer dominates the AI assistant market. A report from Sensor Tower (reported on by TechCrunch) says that although OpenAI’s ChatGPT is still the number one-ranked AI assistant product, it can now brag only the plurality, not the majority of users. ChatGPT’s grip on AI assistant market share was much stronger at the start of this year, when it reportedly had more than 50%, but as of May 31, it was down to an all-time low of 46.4%, TechCrunch notes. Around 2023, ChatGPT looked on track to become a “genericized trademark”—a term for when a trademarked name becomes the accepted term for a whole product category. But anecdotally, I don’t hear people say things like “just ChatGPT it” anymore. In March, OpenAI made a deal with the Pentagon at a time when its chief competitor, Anthropic, was noisily feuding with the Pentagon over that company’s stance against autonomous killer robots and AI mass surveillance. Anthropic managed to become a sort of folk hero, even if that reputation was probably somewhat unearned.
Some AI users revolted in the wake of OpenAI’s deal, which CEO Sam Altman acknowledged looked “opportunistic and sloppy.” An anti-OpenAI organization called QuitGPT, which calls itself a “grassroots campaign by the people, for the people,” formed. Its website claims that “ChatGPT took Trump’s killer robot deal. It’s time to Quit.” That site says 4 million people have joined its boycott.
