Internal figures from OpenAI show that the weekly active users of ChatGPT are approaching the 1 billion threshold. This milestone, originally expected to be reached by the end of last year, finally came seven months later.

Even though it was late, this scale is still impressive. Within less than four years since its launch, ChatGPT has gathered such a large user base, and even if it doesn't hold the title of "fastest growth," it is firmly in the top tier of the fastest-growing internet applications. The company's spokesperson chose to remain silent on this figure and did not comment.

Beneath the spotlight, the slowdown in growth has become evident. Three undercurrents are simultaneously taking away ChatGPT's traffic.

The first comes from Google. Gemini is being continuously and deeply integrated into the web search engine that has billions of users. Every default intelligence behind the search box quietly takes away user habits. The second comes from the release of GPT-5 last autumn — a model whose development was full of twists and turns, and after its release, it was heavily criticized by many users, causing the weekly active user growth curve to clearly take a turn. The third comes from Anthropic's Claude, with data from multiple research institutions pointing to the same conclusion: since the GPT-5 controversy, Claude has taken a share of the chatbot market.

When a product approaches 1 billion weekly active users, the issue it faces is no longer "whether it can grow," but rather "how to maintain its position after growing." The three undercurrents of分流 indicate that the table for chatbots is shifting from a single dominant player to a competition among multiple strong contenders.