Bank of America: Gemini's traffic surged due to AI-generated images, Google and OpenAI's AI rivalry gains new leverage
Research from Bank of America shows that Google's AI assistant Gemini saw a significant increase in user traffic in September, primarily driven by the Nano Banana raw image model. This tool briefly propelled Gemini to the top of the app store. Gemini's global daily average web traffic surged 54% month-over-month, while ChatGPT only grew by 4%. In the U.S. market, Gemini's traffic increased by 37% month-over-month and skyrocketed by 124% year-over-year. Mobile data indicates that Gemini gained 8 million new users, demonstrating the rapid growth of AI applications
According to the latest research from Bank of America, user traffic for Google's (GOOGL.US) artificial intelligence assistant Gemini saw significant growth in September, primarily driven by the viral success of the Nano Banana image generation model launched during the same period on social media platforms, which directly boosted Gemini. An investor report released by the team of analyst Justin Post at Bank of America indicated that this tool briefly propelled the Gemini app to the top of various app store rankings. The analyst emphasized that market sentiment towards Google has partially depended on Gemini's competitiveness compared to ChatGPT, and this increase in user adoption is a positive development for Google.
According to data monitoring from Similarweb, during September, Gemini's global average daily web traffic (including desktop and mobile) surged by 54% month-over-month, while ChatGPT grew by 4%, Google Search by 2%, and Microsoft Bing declined by 4%. Specifically in the U.S. market, Gemini's traffic increased by 37% month-over-month, ChatGPT by 16%, and Bing decreased by 8%. Notably, both platforms achieved record highs in year-over-year traffic in the U.S. market—Gemini soared by 124% year-over-year, while ChatGPT achieved a remarkable 272% growth.
Mobile data further corroborates the explosive growth trend of artificial intelligence applications. Statistics from Sensor Tower show that in September, Gemini added an average of 8 million new users globally, ChatGPT added 15 million, Perplexity added 1 million, and xAI's Grok added 1.8 million users
