- Workplace AI use has repeatedly nearly tripled in global office environments since 2023
- ChatGPT lost significant market share as competing workplace AI tools expanded rapidly
- Google Gemini emerged as ChatGPT’s strongest challenger within professional productivity workflows
Workplace AI adoption has entered a phase of extraordinary acceleration in global office environments, as total time spent using AI tools nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024, and then repeated that explosive growth through 2025.
A new DeskTime report analyzed anonymized data from more than 50,000 users over three years, revealing increasing competition with ChatGPT within workflows.
ChatGPT, which controlled a staggering 99.91% of all AI time tracked in 2023, has seen that monopoly shattered considerably, as according to DeskTime, which tracked power users who log at least 26 hours a year, ChatGPT’s share fell to 74.71% during the first four months of 2026.
A once dominant player loses control
Although a good number of offices still have ChatGPT in their workflows, ChatGPT loyal power users fell from 100% to 75.61% during the same period.
This erosion mirrors what previous Internet users saw when Firefox gradually lost ground to newer alternatives.
“With AI, it’s often difficult to separate hype from reality, so DeskTime decided to investigate what’s really happening in today’s workplace,” said Artis Rozentals, CEO of DeskTime.
“The numbers are compelling…AI is fundamentally redefining work, and the risk of being left behind is growing exponentially.”
Gemini and Claude remain ChatGPT’s main rivals
Google’s Gemini has emerged as the top challenger among workplace AI tools by capturing 14.38% of office AI time recorded so far in 2026.
Claude has made an even more dramatic rise, now accounting for 8.56% of usage and showing the steepest upward curve this year.
Both rivals have turned casual experimenters into regular users at a rate that ChatGPT can’t match.
However, Microsoft’s Copilot presents a disconcerting contrast, as its share has stagnated at about 1% over several years.
Neither growth nor collapse seems to characterize the trajectory of this tool within office environments.
Meanwhile, a category of smaller alternatives, including Perplexity and Mistral, have failed to gain a significant foothold.
The workplace AI agent market is increasingly looking like a three-horse race rather than a single-player field, and workplace professionals are actively diversifying their toolsets rather than limiting themselves to a single familiar interface.
These figures come from a single productivity tracking service and may not represent a generalized narrative of AI use.
The definition of “AI time” can vary across different job functions and industries in ways that distort competitive comparisons.
However, the current trend seems consistent enough to warrant the attention of any dominant software vendor.
Whether ChatGPT can reverse this decline or follow Firefox toward niche status remains an open question for the rest of 2026.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to receive news, reviews and opinions from our experts in your feeds.
