AI statistics go stale in months, and many "ChatGPT statistics" pages repeat figures nobody can trace. This page lists AI search statistics only from primary sources we opened (research papers, Google's own earnings remarks, Pew Research Center and KFF), each with its date and method. It keeps general-population findings apart from health-specific ones and never relabels "adults" as "patients".
Interest is real on the Google side: "ai overviews" gets about 135,000 US searches a month, "ai mode google" 90,500 and "google ai overviews" 18,100. Fewer people look for the numbers themselves: "chatgpt usage statistics" gets 320 and "chatgpt statistics" 260 (Google Ads Keyword Planner data via DataForSEO, US, 12-month average to Sep 2026). This page is part of Medfy's healthcare marketing benchmarks.
How we source AI statistics
Our rules for this page:
- Primary sources only. Company figures come from the company's own research or earnings remarks. Survey figures come from the survey publisher.
- Date everything. Each figure carries its publication date and, where given, its fieldwork period and sample.
- Label the population. "General population" means all adults; "health-specific" means the question was about health. A vendor survey of patients is labeled as such.
- Leave out what we can't open. OpenAI's own website blocked our requests, so OpenAI's announcements aren't cited here; we use the research paper its staff co-wrote instead.
- Refresh quarterly. These numbers move fast. This edition was checked on October 23, 2026.
ChatGPT and AI assistant usage
General population, worldwide. A September 2025 NBER working paper, How People Use ChatGPT (opens in a new tab), written by OpenAI researchers and academic economists, reports:
- More than 700 million weekly active users by the end of July 2025, about 10% of the world's adult population.
- 18 billion messages sent each week by July 2025.
- Non-work messages grew from 53% to more than 70% of all usage.
- Practical guidance, seeking information and writing make up about 77% of conversations. The paper classifies roughly 1.1 million sampled conversations from May 2024 to June 2025 with an automated, privacy-preserving pipeline.
General population, US. Pew Research Center (opens in a new tab) surveyed 5,123 US adults from February 24 to March 2, 2025 (published June 25, 2025):
| Group | Have ever used ChatGPT |
|---|---|
| All US adults | 34% |
| Adults under 30 | 58% |
| Employed adults, used it for work | 28% |
| All adults, used it to learn something new | 26% |
Other assistants. Google reports its Gemini app grew from more than 650 million monthly active users (October 2025 (opens in a new tab)) to 950 million (July 2026 (opens in a new tab)).
Local decisions (general consumers). In BrightLocal's 2026 consumer review survey (opens in a new tab) of 1,002 US adults, 45% said they used ChatGPT or other AI tools to read about local businesses, up from 6% a year earlier.
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode reach
AI Overviews are the AI-written summaries at the top of some Google results; AI Mode is Google's conversational search tab. Google's own figures:
| Date | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| July 23, 2025 | AI Overviews: more than 2 billion monthly users in 200+ countries and territories and 40 languages | Q2 2025 remarks (opens in a new tab) |
| July 23, 2025 | AI Mode: more than 100 million monthly active users in the US and India | Q2 2025 remarks |
| October 29, 2025 | AI Mode: more than 75 million daily active users | Q3 2025 remarks |
| July 22, 2026 | AI Mode: more than 1 billion monthly active users since its global expansion | Q2 2026 remarks (opens in a new tab) |
In July 2026 Google also said it is "sending billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search". It gave no click-through rate.
What happens to clicks. The best independent measurement is Pew Research Center's (opens in a new tab) analysis of the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025 (68,879 Google searches; published July 22, 2025):
- 18% of searches produced an AI summary.
- Users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits with a summary, against 15% without one.
- They clicked a link inside the summary on 1% of visits.
- They ended their browsing session on 26% of pages with a summary, against 16% without.
- Searches phrased as questions produced a summary 60% of the time; one- or two-word searches only 8%.
Pew didn't break results out by health topic. Our guide to Google AI Overviews covers how they choose sources.
People asking AI about health
Health-specific, US adults. KFF's tracking poll (opens in a new tab) surveyed 1,343 US adults from February 24 to March 2, 2026 (published March 25, 2026; margin of error ±3 points):
| Finding | Share |
|---|---|
| Used AI chatbots for physical or mental health information or advice in the past year | 32% |
| For physical health | 29% |
| For mental health | 16% |
| Adults 18 to 29, for physical health | 36% |
| Concerned about the privacy of medical information given to AI tools | 77% |
Among people who used AI for health:
- 65% said quick or immediate information was a major reason; 41% were looking up information before seeing a provider.
- 58% of physical-health users later followed up with a doctor or provider.
- 16% of physical-health users used AI to help decide whether to see a doctor.
- 41% had uploaded personal medical information, such as test results, equal to 13% of all adults.
- 69% of users trust AI for physical health information, against 18% of non-users.
For context, KFF's earlier 2024 poll (opens in a new tab) (June 2024, 2,428 adults) found 17% used AI chatbots at least once a month for health information. The questions differ, so the two figures aren't a trend line.
Patients choosing a doctor (vendor survey). In rater8's 2026 Patient Choice Report (opens in a new tab) (published June 3, 2026; nearly 1,000 US adult patients; methods not published on the page), 36% of patients who searched for a doctor in the past year named AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude as an influence, against 34% for Google search and 32% for doctor recommendations.
What this means for local practices
- AI answers are a new front door, not a replacement. A third of US adults have used AI for health information, and most physical-health users still followed up with a provider. When they look for one, you want to be named.
- Fewer clicks from Google means each one matters more. Pew's data shows fewer clicks when an AI summary appears. Make sure the visitors who do click can call or book at once.
- Be the source AI can read. Assistants that search the web draw on pages they can read. Clear service pages, accurate hours and locations, and consistent details across your listings make you easier to cite. Our AI visibility guide explains what helps.
- Measure it. AI assistants send visits you can count; see our guide to measuring ChatGPT traffic. Medfy's first-party analytics count visits from AI assistants alongside calls, forms and bookings.
To check where you stand now, try the AI visibility checker or the free marketing audit, which asks Claude and Gemini (with live web search) whether they name your practice and checks that the crawlers behind ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini can read your site.
Coming next: Medfy's audit data on AI recommendations
None of the sources above answers the question practices care about most: when a patient asks an AI assistant for a provider, how often does it name an independent practice?
Medfy plans to publish that answer from its own audit data once enough audits exist to be meaningful. The planned study will show, by specialty, the share of practices each assistant names for patient-style questions. It will use aggregate numbers only and never name a practice.
Until then, practices can track their own visibility: Medfy's base plan asks ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews the questions patients ask every week, and shows whether they name the practice, who they recommend instead, and how that changes.
Frequently asked questions
How many people use ChatGPT?
By the end of July 2025, ChatGPT had more than 700 million weekly active users, about 10% of the world's adults, sending 18 billion messages a week, according to a September 2025 NBER working paper by OpenAI and academic researchers. In the US, 34% of adults said they had ever used ChatGPT in Pew Research Center's February to March 2025 survey, including 58% of adults under 30.
How often do Google AI Overviews appear for health searches?
We found no primary source that reports a health-specific rate. The best general figure is Pew Research Center's: in March 2025, 18% of Google searches by 900 US adults produced an AI summary, rising to 60% for searches phrased as questions. Health questions are often phrased that way, but that is an inference, not a measurement. Check your own key searches by hand.
Do patients use AI assistants to find doctors?
Some do, though no source measures it directly. In KFF's 2026 poll, 32% of US adults used AI chatbots for health information in the past year, and 16% of those asking about physical health used them to help decide whether to see a doctor. In rater8's 2026 vendor survey, 36% of patients who searched for a doctor named AI tools as an influence.