AI in Italy, 18.9 million users: ChatGPT loses share

This is what emerges from the new Sensemakers calculations on Comscore data, carried out on the occasion of the Netcomm FOCUS Digital Marketing & Channel Strategy, which photograph a rapidly transforming market, with consequences not only on users’ digital habits, but also on online search and companies’ advertising strategies.

The penetration of AI assistants on the Italian digital population went from 20% at the beginning of 2025 to 40% in August 2026, reducing the gap compared to other countries, where the percentage stands between 44% and 46%. Growth, however, is slowing down: if in the first half of 2025 adoption increased by nine percentage points, in the first six months of 2026 progress was limited to two points.

Above all, the intensity of use is growing. In the first half of 2026, Italians spent an average of 80 minutes per month on AI assistants, compared to 44 minutes the previous year. A value even lower than that of the United States, where 94 minutes per month are recorded, and above all of the United Kingdom, which reaches 118 minutes.

The device through which the AI ​​is accessed also changes. Since June 2025, the mobile audience has surpassed the desktop one, reversing the ratio observed at the beginning of last year. In the first half of 2026, assistants were used on average by 12.2 million visitors via smartphones and other mobile devices, compared to 10.7 million on computers. However, the desktop maintains an advantage in usage time: 78 minutes per month per visitor, compared to 47 for mobile.

Another significant element concerns the age of the users. AI is no longer a technology predominantly associated with the very young. As of May 2026, the highest penetration was among 25-34 year olds, at 55.6%, followed by 35-44 year olds, at 46.8%. Young people between 18 and 24 remain those who spend the most time on assistants, with 123 minutes per month, but it is those over 45 who show one of the greatest accelerations: compared to May 2025, the average time of use increased by 96.4%, reaching 65 minutes per month per visitor.

The spread of AI is also accompanied by a progressive diversification of the market. ChatGPT maintains its lead with 13.9 million unique visitors in August, but its weight in the overall assistant audience has decreased significantly. If in mid-2025 it alone reached around 90% of the audience for these tools, in August 2026 the percentage dropped to 74%.

Above all, competing platforms are gaining ground. Google Gemini, in particular, surpassed 9 million visitors in August. The growth of competition does not necessarily mean that users are abandoning ChatGPT: more and more people are using several assistants at the same time. The share of users accessing at least two AI tools in the same month has gone from one in six to around one in 3.5, a sign of a market in which alternatives and uses are multiplying.

The transformation also affects the way Italians search for information on the Internet. Answers automatically generated by artificial intelligence are becoming an increasingly present component of traditional search engines. According to Sensemakers, Italians exposed to AI Overview summaries within searches carried out on Google and Bing are now over 20 million, an audience even higher than that of monthly users of AI assistants.

The Comscore findings, based on the observation of the browsing behavior and actual requests of a panel of 40 thousand people representative of the Italian population, show that in June 2026 AI summaries appeared in 22% of searches carried out on Google from desktops in Italy, compared to just 8% in April 2025. A change that could have a profound impact on the relationship between search engines, publishers and websites, since a growing part of the information is provided directly on the results pages.

New user habits are also opening up commercial opportunities. In the United States, where the market transformation is more advanced, there is a growing presence of advertising within AI assistants. According to American data reported by Sensemakers, on ChatGPT the percentage of conversations related to video games and consoles that include sponsored ads rose from 3% in March 2026 to 47% in June. A significant increase also emerges in the toys and hobbies sectors, from 5% to 24%, and books, music and videos, from 9% to 22%.

These are dynamics that could anticipate the evolution of the advertising market also in Europe, where the growing diffusion of AI assistants poses new challenges to brands’ visibility strategies and the traditional online search model.

“AI is now a mass phenomenon and, as the large OTT platforms have demonstrated, such large-scale adoption can quickly redefine the rules of the market,” comments Antonio Pepe, COO and Partner of Sensemakers. “Observing the most advanced countries allows us to anticipate changes, seize new opportunities and reduce risks”.