ChatGPT becomes most downloaded app of 2025 as safety concerns and AI bubble debates intensify

ChatGPT tops Apple's App Store as the most downloaded iOS app of 2025

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. In context: ChatGPT's extreme popularity makes its position as 2025's most downloaded iOS app unsurprising. Amid controversy, the service has hundreds of millions of users, including a large portion of US teens. However, Google's rival chatbot is gaining ground, and ChatGPT's commercial success remains far from certain. Apple has released a list of the App Store's most downloaded free apps, with OpenAI's ChatGPT predictably at the top. "The GenAI chatbot has seen tremendous growth since its introduction, which helped launch the ongoing AI craze. With over 800 million weekly users, ChatGPT has quadrupled its user base over the past year and added over 300 million users since March. ChatGPT processes nearly 30,000 messages per second, and most adults use it to find information, effectively replacing traditional search engines. Meanwhile, almost one-third of US teenagers use chatbots daily, 59 percent of whom use ChatGPT. Google, concerned that OpenAI's chatbot could replace its search engine, has rapidly developed its rival, Gemini, integrating it into its web browser and other products. Although AI-generated summaries and other features have reduced traffic from Google searches, the company believes that disrupting a status quo beneficial to itself is worth avoiding the risk of Blockbuster's fate. Although Gemini barely made it into Apple's top 10 apps (tellingly, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Search rank higher), its usage and feature set have grown enough to frighten OpenAI. The ChatGPT developer recently declared a "code red," shifting focus from introducing new features to enhancing performance and reliability. Google's rapid GenAI development likely stems from its existing businesses, putting it on much firmer financial ground than OpenAI - a private company that still relies on fundraising. Despite planning to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years, OpenAI does not plan to become profitable until at least 2029. The situation has sparked widespread discussion of an AI bubble, as the technology has not generated profits for most businesses, and related investments have singlehandedly upheld the US economy. Furthermore, questions about GenAI's effectiveness have not diminished, as chatbots and large language models continue to prove inaccurate and even harmful. Notably, Copilot is absent from Apple's top 20 apps, suggesting that the billions Microsoft has invested in GenAI have not paid off. Indeed, no Microsoft apps appear on the list, the rest of which is a mostly predictable collection of social media apps. TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube sit in the top 10, maintaining their ubiquity, while Facebook falls just short at rank 11. Surprisingly, Threads ranks second despite receiving less attention than Twitter and Bluesky, neither of which appears in the top 20. Another standout is the free video editor CapCut, ranked 12th, which is also available on Android, Windows, and macOS.

ChatGPT ranked the most downloaded app amid reports of...

Apple recently released its list of the most downloaded apps of the year, finding that ChatGPT boasted the most installs of any free app (not including games) in the US in 2025. Following on the heels of OpenAI's ubiquitous chatbot were Threads, Google, TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail, and Google's Gemini. This marks a massive turnaround for ChatGPT, which ranked fourth last year while Chinese app Temu snagged the top spot, TechCrunch reported. The language learning model didn't even crack the top ten in 2023 -- the year of its release. That wasn't the only category included in the Apple announcement. Block Blast, Fortnite and Roblox topped the list of free iPhone games, while Minecraft, Balatro, and Heads Up ranked among the top paid iPhone games. As for free iPad apps, YouTube was the number one most popular, followed by ChatGPT, Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video. Procreate, Procreate Dreams, forScore, ToonSquid, and Nomad Sculpt swept the top six in the category of paid apps. ChatGPT's meteoric rise is perhaps unsurprising given its ubiquity in every sector from law to academia. Although some would argue that its omnipresence is disconcerting, given the app's apparent propensity to facilitate harm. In August, the chatbot allegedly provided a 16-year-old California boy, Adam Raine, a detailed tutorial on how to kill himself before he did so earlier this year, prompting the boy's parents to file a lawsuit. In response, OpenAI -- headed by CEO Sam Altman -- blamed Raine's "misuse, unauthorized use, unintended use, unforeseeable use, and/or improper use of ChatGPT" for his death. Meanwhile, in August, the bot reportedly became complicit in its first ever murder. It was reportedly blamed for feeding a Connecticut boy's paranoid delusions, coercing him into killing his mother, before he committed suicide, in an incident lawyers called "scarier than the Terminator." AI experts attribute this unfortunate phenomenon to the fact that while ChatGPT boasts built-in guardrails preventing it from disseminating harmful info, they have limited mileage. As a result, the longer the conversation, the greater the chance of the bot going rogue. "ChatGPT includes safeguards such as directing people to crisis helplines," said an OpenAI spokesperson in a statement following Adam Raine's death. "While these safeguards work best in common, short exchanges, we've learned over time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions where parts of the model's safety training may degrade." This glitch is particularly alarming given the prevalence of ChatGPT use among youths. Some 72% of American teens use AI as a companion, while one in eight of them are turning to the technology for mental health support, according to a Common Sense Media poll. Meanwhile, a study from the fall found that AI chatbots like ChatGPT struggle to distinguish between belief and fact, fueling concerns about their propensity to spread misinformation.