The news: Despite ChatGPT’s first-mover advantage, the tides are changing on consumers’ preferred AI tools, per a YouGov survey of US adults who have used genAI in the past 30 days. Between February and July 2026, Gemini grew in popularity by 6.8 percentage points and Copilot gained 3 points, while ChatGPT fell 5.9 points.

However, ChatGPT remains consumers’ preferred AI tool by a wide margin, with 33.7% of US consumers preferring it, versus 18.2% for Gemini and 8.2% for Microsoft Copilot. Consumers also see ChatGPT and Gemini as the top two most-accurate AI platforms, followed by Claude.

Zooming out: Preference for specific AI platforms could eventually influence which interface mediates brand and product discovery, opening a door to platform-specific use cases and targeting.

• ChatGPT attracts users who are likely accessing retail and banking sites, per Similarweb.
• Claude overindexes users of education and employment sites.
• And Gemini users are predominantly technology- and gaming-focused.

AI assistants are also developing into consumer gateways, with 58% of frequent, regular, and occasional US AI searchers using the technology to find information more often now than they did a year ago, per YouGov’s “Searching for Answers” report.

However, only 28% of US online searchers trust AI-sourced information, compared with 76% for maps and navigation apps and 70% for search engines. That trust gap mandates dual SEO and GEO efforts.

Recommendations for marketers: If consumers perceive AI assistants as having different levels of accuracy and trust, brands need to audit what content and claims those assistants provide about their business and products to ensure the information users are relying on is correct.

ChatGPT isn’t guaranteed to remain the default AI choice among consumers. Marketers need to determine which AI environments are worth investing in for content optimization, data integrations, measurement, and emerging AI advertising offerings.