AI is booming like no other industry! GenAI Apps like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Gemini have changed the way people do their work. While AI is a generic term, a specific part of it that has grown a lot is generative AI.
Apps that use Generative AI (GenAI) have seen significant growth in the first half of 2025. According to a report from Sensor Tower (a company that tracks app data), these apps were downloaded 1.7 billion times, marking a significant increase from 1 billion downloads in the second half of 2024.
These apps also doubled their revenue through in-app purchases. In the first half of 2025, they earned $1.87 billion, compared to $932 million in the last half of 2024.
People are also spending much more time using GenAI apps. In the first six months of 2025, users spent over 15.6 billion hours on these apps. That’s almost double the 8.5 billion hours spent in the previous six months.
All this activity happened across 426 billion sessions (times people opened and used the apps).
Asia leads in GenAI app downloads.
Asia was the fastest-growing region for GenAI apps. It also had the highest share of downloads, 42.6% of all downloads, mainly because of big markets like India and China.
In the first half of 2025:
- Downloads grew by 80% in Asia
- Europe saw a 51% increase.
- North America had a 39% increase.
Latin America sees the fastest growth in spending.
Latin America (LatAm) had the fastest increase in people spending money on GenAI apps. But North America still made the most money overall, with a 40% share of the total revenue.
ChatGPT’s continued growth
Sensor Tower reported that ChatGPT earned the most in-app revenue in almost every country, except China. In China, another app called DeepSeek had more downloads after it launched.
People are also spending more time using AI assistants like ChatGPT. In the first half of 2025, users opened ChatGPT for more than 12 days per month on average. Other popular GenAI apps include:
- Character AI
- PolyBuzz
- DeepSeek
- Perplexity
ChatGPT is also keeping users engaged. The report said people are using ChatGPT almost as much as social apps like X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit. Only Google has more average days of usage per month.
Even on weekends, more people are using ChatGPT now than last year, which means they’re not just using it for work but also for personal tasks.
The report noted that this usage pattern is comparable to Google, where people use the app both at work and in their free time.
ChatGPT is catching up with top search engines and web browsers. In the first half of 2025:
- People spent 16 minutes per day using ChatGPT.
- That’s close to the 18.2 minutes per day people spent on top search and browser apps.
More uses beyond search
People are using ChatGPT for many daily activities, like:
- Health and wellness tips
- Shopping help
- Money and budgeting advice
- Meal planning
In the second quarter of 2025, more than one-third of ChatGPT prompts were about lifestyle and entertainment.
ChatGPT is also growing across both mobile and web platforms. In the U.S., over 15% of users access ChatGPT on both mobile and web, at a higher rate than other platforms like Temu and Threads.
But it still has to catch up with big platforms like:
- YouTube
- Google Docs
- Amazon
These platforms have more than 25% of their users using both web and mobile versions.
Apps are adding “AI,” literally.
Sensor Tower’s report also pointed out that the word “AI” is now being used a lot in app names and descriptions. On both the App Store and Google Play Store, “AI” appears more than 100,000 times.
In the first half of 2025, people downloaded apps with “AI” in the name or description 7.5 billion times. That’s around 10% of all app downloads during that time.
Over the past year, more apps across various categories have started incorporating AI-related terms. These include:
- AI assistants
- AI content creators
- Photo editing
- Nutrition and diet
- Exam preparation
- Tutoring and studying
- Language translation
- Hobbies and interest-based apps
Many top-charting apps now have “AI” in their names. However, adding “AI” usually gives only a short-term increase in downloads.
Sensor Tower said, “It’s not surprising , apps that added words like ‘AI’ or ‘LLM’ (Large Language Model) in their names or descriptions saw a quick rise in downloads for a few months afterwards.”
