A new generation of consumer software categories is forming around generative artificial intelligence. From AI companions and conversational search to prompt-based coding tools and video generators, products that barely appeared on app roadmaps two years ago now attract millions of users and create their own subscription economies.
New category, built from scratch
Not so long ago, the idea of consumers paying a monthly fee to talk to an AI companion felt like a distant future. Character.AI currently ranks as one of the most trafficked AI products on the web, with engagement patterns that more closely resemble those of social media than traditional software. This is one of several products in the top 50 that represent an entirely new consumer category with no real predecessors in app stores in 2022.
Video editor CapCut currently has 736 million monthly active mobile users and relies on AI for its most popular features, including background removal, AI effects, automatic captions, and text-to-video generation. Canva has built its growth engine around its Magic Suite of AI tools. At Notion, paid AI connectivity rates have jumped from 20% to more than 50% in one year, and AI capabilities now account for about half of annual recurring revenue.
These are not startups. These are established products that have been effectively rebuilt around AI capabilities. But running alongside them in the rankings is another tier, a tool that could not exist without generative AI as its foundation.
AI-native search products like Perplexity. Video generation platform. Coding assistant. Companion app. Each represents a category that barely registered on product roadmaps in 2023 and now commands its own user community, retention, and often subscription revenue.
According to a16z, the web top 50 and mobile top 50 tell slightly different stories. ChatGPT remains the dominant platform, with 900 million weekly active users as of early 2026, up from 500 million in the past year. On the web, it has 2.7x more monthly active users than the second-ranked product, Gemini, and on mobile, it has 2.5x more monthly active users.
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Mobile adds specialized tools to the list for distinct high-frequency use cases, such as image generation, video creation, AI instruction, companion chat, and AI-enhanced language learning. Consumers are dominating the usage charts with generative AI at the core of their experiences, including CapCut, Canva, Notion, Picsart, Freepik, and Grammarly.
Consumers are reshaping their habits
Looking at the behavioral data, it’s clear that this isn’t about future possibilities. By now a habit is forming. According to a PYMNTS study, more than 60% of U.S. consumers have used a dedicated AI platform such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity in the past year. More than a third of Gen Z consumers and power users are turning to AI first when starting a personal task, a clear shift away from traditional search and browsing.
According to the PYMNTS Consumer AI Benchmark, which tracks adoption across 54 personal use cases from shopping to health to travel, in December, 54.9% of consumers used generative or agent AI for at least one personal task, and usage is highly polarized, with 78.3% of power users using AI to find things to buy, compared to 24.9% of light users.
Menlo Ventures’ State of Consumer AI report adds context to the monetization gap underlying all of this. In the roughly two and a half years since ChatGPT launched, consumer AI has become a roughly $12 billion market, with 1.8 billion users worldwide and an average monthly subscription cost of $20, with only about 3% paying for premium services. Even ChatGPT only converts about 5% of its weekly active users into paid subscribers. The gap between usage and payment is currently one of the defining commercial issues in consumer technology.
A common comparison is that AI could be the platform shift for the next smartphone era. Mobile is more than just an improvement on existing software. This has created entirely new categories such as ride-sharing, social video, and food delivery that have no desktop equivalent and could not exist without the platform. Whether AI-native categories such as companion apps, AI search, and agent commerce follow the same trajectory depends on whether today’s habit formation proves durable. The data suggests it may be heading in that direction, at least for now.
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