Artificial Intelligence - 12 most widely used AI systems in 2026

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems vary widely in terms of capability, users and mixed integration with other platforms. The media and the industry itself are open to a level of hype and promotion, making comparisons between systems very difficult. The list below provides a simple summary of the main 12 AI systems in use today with whatever level of information that can be gleaned from various sources with large data gaps. There are other smaller models such as Mistral, GLM and Cohere Command which would be listed below the top 12. Many AI models are now China-based rather than in the West.

The Large Language Models (LLMs) and products are -

1. ChatGPT (OpenAI): approx 1 billion active weekly users and the largest standalone AI assistant at present. 
2. Llama 4 (Meta AI): 1.2 billion monthly active users across Meta's apps. Mostly this AI is embedded in WhatsApp/Instagram/Messenger rather than as a standalone chat model.
3. Gemini (Google): around 950 million active monthly users on the standalone app. Separately, Gemini powered AI overviews reach over 2 billion monthly users through integration with Google Search.
4. Microsoft Copilot: (GPT based + Microsoft) around 420 million monthly active users across all operating systems. This is expanding to Copilot being bundled with Microsoft 365 and operating systems.
5. DonBao (Byte Dance): approx 260 million monthly active users. This is an increase of 300% from 2025. This is China's top consumer AI app. 
6. Ernie Bot (Baidu): Monthly active users has passed 200 million however it is tied to Baidu Search.
7. DeepSeek (Deepseek): around 130 million users at the end of 2025. Majority of users are located in China although the AI model has a broad global fooprint.
8. Qwen (Alibaba): This AI model has now exceeded 100 million active monthly users and has a strong presence in China and in the open-weight AI community.
9. Claude (Anthropic): estimates on users vary widely depending on the source and method of estimation. The range is between 70 and 250 million users per month. This is the fastest growing Western AI assistant with a year-on-year growth of a staggering 855%.
10. Perplexity: approx 45 million monthly active users. This model is predominantly an AI first search and answer engine rather than an LLM chat system.
11. Grok (xAI): No reliable standalone figure as this AI model is often connected via X's social media platform which has hundreds of millions of users. Grok can be used as a standalone model without using X. 
12. Kimi (Moonshot AI): a more recent AI model launched this year and still gaining traction. A Chinese AI app it is significantly smaller than the other AI models and its number of users is only in the tens of millions in China.

A later blog article will cover ranking by capability of AI systems.