THE artificial intelligence (AI) market is expanding rapidly, but visits are mostly flowing to a small group of dominant platforms, with ChatGPT alone accounting for nearly half of all AI-related web traffic.

A recent study done by global insights and market intelligence firm OneLittleWeb found that of roughly 9531 AI tools which generated 144.5 billion web visits over the last 12 months — approximately 129.6 billion of those visits or about 89.7 per cent went to just 100 platforms.

At the top of the market was OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which recorded 64.7 billion visits, up from 38.1 billion a year earlier. That represented 44.76 per cent of all AI tool traffic and 49.92 per cent of traffic among the top 100 platforms.

ChatGPT also posted the largest year-over-year increase in the study, adding 26.6 billion visits as traffic surged 69.8 per cent.

“ChatGPT is expanding at a scale no other AI tool can match, while Gemini, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, and Perplexity also gained ground as competition among chatbots becomes stronger,” the study noted.

Other platforms ranked among the top 100 included Microsoft Copilot, with 1.2 billion visits; Grammarly at 696 million; Duolingo at 620.9 million and TurboScribe at 317.9 million. Zoom also ranked further among the leading platforms tracked.

The findings point to an AI market in which scale is increasingly being translated into dominance, and users are gravitating towards platforms capable of handling multiple tasks rather than relying on a collection of specialised tools.

According to Sujan Sarkar, co-founder and SEO consultant at OneLittleWeb, while AI is expanding rapidly within its own market it remains a relatively small component of overall Internet activity.

“Within its own market AI is expanding quickly and concentrating around a small group of leaders. Yet against the Internet as a whole it still represents a relatively small share of total activity, leaving plenty of room for further adoption,” Sarkar said.

The concentration is particularly evident in the chatbot segment, which emerged as the dominant category within the AI market.

According to the 2026 study, chatbot traffic jumped from 45.1 billion to 86 billion visits — an increase of 90.82 per cent. The category now accounts for 59.52 per cent of all AI tool traffic.

At the same time, several specialised platforms lost significant ground, suggesting that users may be consolidating more of their AI activity around broader, multifunctional platforms.

Google Translate recorded the largest absolute decline among the tools studied, losing 1.5 billion visits, or 23.46 per cent. Chegg’s traffic fell 61.45 per cent, while Quizlet and QuillBot declined 29 per cent and 25.24 per cent, respectively.

“The pattern suggests that users are increasingly consolidating their AI activity around platforms that can perform multiple tasks rather than switching between specialised tools,” Sarkar said.

The findings also highlighting Canva as a perfect example of consolidation showed that the popular design platform generated 10.5 billion visits, up from 9.1 billion last year, as it captured 96.28 per cent of total traffic in the design-generator category.

Having already incorporated AI into its workflows, the study found users relying on these capabilities for sharper presentations, social media graphics, images and other design functions.

“That helps to explain why Canva remains far ahead of every other AI design generator, even with a more moderate 15.54 per cent year-over-year growth rate,” Sarkar said.