How the new AI search race is changing brand visibility

Updated: 11/12/25 November

By Sabrina Bulteau PingPrime.ai

For two years, the story was simple: ChatGPT defined the market; everyone else followed. That story is changing fast.

Three signals from recent weeks make it clear we've entered a new phase of the AI race:

1. Google is merging AI Overviews and Gemini's AI Mode directly into Search, turning the world's largest search engine into a continuous AI conversation.
2. ChatGPT's growth is slowing, while Google's Gemini is accelerating, both in users and engagement.
3. Sam Altman issued an internal "code red" at OpenAI, calling for an urgent refocus on ChatGPT as competition intensifies.

For brands, publishers, and platforms, this isn't just tech chatter about the AI search race. It's a distribution story: where attention flows, who controls the interface, and how your content or products show up in increasingly AI-driven environments.

1. Google is turning Search into a native AI assistant

Until now, Google Search had two parallel layers:

• AI Overviews: AI-generated summaries at the top of search results.
• AI Mode (Gemini): a separate conversational space, a "ChatGPT-like" interface that users had to deliberately open.

This separation created friction: users had to decide upfront whether they wanted a quick answer (classic search / AI Overview) or deeper exploration (AI Mode).

Google is now testing a merger of the two:

• Users start with an AI Overview as usual.
• From the same screen, they can continue the conversation with Gemini, ask follow-up questions, refine the query, explore context, without leaving the results page.

A few numbers show why this matters:

• About 2 billion users see AI Overviews every month.
• Gemini has surpassed 650 million monthly active users, nearly doubling in seven months.

By merging these experiences, Google is quietly welcoming hundreds of millions of people into conversational AI, even if they never press a dedicated AI button.

In practice, this means:

For a massive share of the planet, "searching Google" becomes "talking to Gemini" by default.

2. The numbers behind the AI search race: ChatGPT is still bigger, but momentum is shifting

Recent usage data (via Sensor Tower, relayed by BNT) shows a notable shift in trend between August and November 2025:

• ChatGPT
• Gemini

• 6% user growth over the period
• ~810 million monthly active users
• ~55% share of the consumer AI assistant market
• -3 points of market share

• 30% growth over the same period
• +3 points of market share
• ~190% year-over-year growth

Engagement tells an even sharper story:

• Average daily time in the Gemini app is up 120%, to about 11 minutes per day.
• Time in the ChatGPT app is only up 6%, with a 10% drop in usage observed between July and November.

In other words:

• ChatGPT still has more users, but they're not accelerating.
• Gemini has fewer users, but they're adopting it faster and using it more intensively.

Add to that the rise of Perplexity, posting +215% year-over-year growth, and you no longer have a single default assistant, you have a competitive ecosystem.

3. Inside OpenAI's "code red": refocusing on ChatGPT

Against this backdrop, Sam Altman sent an internal memo described as a "code red", urging OpenAI to urgently refocus on its core product: ChatGPT.

Key takeaways from this internal communication and surrounding reports:

• OpenAI spent much of 2025 diversifying:
• Altman is now calling for improvements to ChatGPT in:
• Meanwhile, Google has nearly caught up in assistants, thanks to Gemini's growth and its deep integration into Search and Android.
• Financially, Google generates billions in cash every quarter, while OpenAI is still losing money every month and doesn't expect to be profitable until 2029. OpenAI is also pushing new product features in response to this pressure:
• Shopping search inside ChatGPT, positioned as a way to guide users through product choices without visiting dozens of sites.
• Experiments around recruiting, group conversations, and other more verticalized use cases.

• Sora (video generation)
• Infrastructure projects
• A connected device initiative

• Personalization
• Speed
• Ability to respond more effectively to user requests

The message is clear: the company that popularized AI assistants must now fight to keep its lead as platforms with deeper distribution (Google, possibly Apple via Gemini partnerships) move fast.

4. What this means for brands and publishers

Beyond the headlines, these shifts are redrawing the environment in which your content, offers, and messaging live.

1) Search becomes a dialogue, not a list

With AI Overviews merged into Gemini's conversational mode, a user can:

• Ask a broad question
• Get a synthesized answer
• Immediately refine it with follow-ups
• Stay in the same persistent context

Traditional concepts like "position 1 on page one" matter less when:

• The first thing users see is an AI summary, not your blue link.
• Their second and third questions are asked inside the chat, not in separate searches.

Your strategic question shifts from:

"How do I rank for this keyword?" to "How do I become a trusted source the AI can rely on and cite consistently?"

2) Distribution is no longer on a single channel

Not long ago, most conversations about "AI traffic" were: What does ChatGPT say about us?

That's no longer enough:

• Gemini is integrated into Search, Android, Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, and more.
• ChatGPT still commands scale and is investing heavily in its assistant, shopping, and B2B ecosystem.
• Perplexity and others are growing fast as answer engines that sit between users and the open web.

For brands, this means:

• You can't optimize for just one AI assistant.
• You need visibility, consistency, and trust signals across multiple AI surfaces.

3) Regulatory and trust pressure will grow

As AI Overviews expand, regulators are already investigating how Google uses publisher content to train models and generate answers, and whether it fairly compensates content creators.

Whatever the outcomes, the direction is clear:

• Expect ongoing debates on attribution, traffic, and revenue sharing.
• Expect users to care even more about source credibility, bias, and sustainability in a world where AI mediates most information.

The AI assistant war is no longer about who has the flashiest demo. It's about who controls daily interactions, the search bar, the browser, the home screen, and whose answers users see, trust, and act on.

For organizations acting now, this new landscape isn't a threat but a lever: a way to reach people with more relevance, more clarity, and more consistency across every AI-mediated touchpoint.

About Sabrina Bulteau

After more than two decades shaping the digital world by co-founding Be Connect, one of Belgium's first social media agencies, Sabrina Bulteau is now co-founder of PingPrime.ai. She pioneers Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help brands, institutions, and media become the trusted reference that generative AI systems retrieve, cite, and recommend. Her goal: navigate the AI search shift and move organizations from visibility to narrative authority, so they're not just found, but believed and chosen. No fluff. Just impact.

Sources:

Sources:

• fr.themedialeader.com
• https://www.blog-nouvelles-technologies.fr/351028/google-search-gemini-fusion-ai-overviews/
• etcjournal.com+2djtechnologies.net+2
• https://blog.google/technology/ai/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
• https://www.blog-nouvelles-technologies.fr/351459/chatgpt-stagnation-gemini-croissance/
• Reuters