The recent crash of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT has sparked increased interest in Google’s conversational AI rival Gemini. Data from the QR code generator shows an almost 60% increase in global searches for the word “Gemini” on June 4; This exactly matches ChatGPT’s reported downtime. The average number of daily searches for Gemini was around 204,991, but during the ChatGPT crash this number increased to 327,058; This shows that users are actively looking for alternatives when their chatbot becomes unusable.

The ChatGPT outage began at around 8am London time on 4 June.

Interestingly, the increase in Gemini searches mirrored the increase in searches for “ChatGPT down” during the same period, highlighting a clear correlation. DownDetector reported that the ChatGPT outage began around 8am London time on June 4th.

While Gemini was the most popular alternative, other searches such as “Microsoft Copilot” and “ChatGPT Alternative” also saw growth. Daily searches for “Microsoft Copilot” are usually around 11,090, but on June 4, that number jumped 50% to 16,677. Similarly, searches for “ChatGPT Alternative” increased to 11,000 in the first few hours after the crash, compared to a daily average of 898. However, it is important to note that these alternative searches pale in comparison to Gemini’s growing interest.

Mark Porkar, CEO of QR Code Generator, sees this as a testament to Google’s efforts to position itself as a major player in generative AI. “The clear parallel trend between the ChatGPT crash and the spike in Gemini searches shows that people see Gemini as an obvious alternative,” commented Porcar. He also notes that in the absence of ChatGPT, users easily turn to Gemini, indicating its potential to be a strong competitor.

It is worth noting that OpenAI’s ChatGPT has approximately 180 million active users worldwide, solidifying its position as the leader in productive AI chatbots. Launched in late 2023 as the successor to LaMDA and PaLM 2, Google Gemini burst onto the scene with Google parent company Alphabet claiming that “Gemini Ultra” outperforms GPT-V4 OpenAI on a variety of text and multimodal features. The recent ChatGPT crash has given Gemini an unexpected opportunity to gain popularity among users looking for an alternative, and it will be interesting to see whether this will lead to sustainable growth for Google’s conversational AI offering.