What AI applications are people using? Which applications are people trying and then giving up on, and which ones are they continuing to use? California venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz provides some insights into these questions with the third edition of its "Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps" list.

The company states that it analyzes existing data every six months to understand which AI applications people are using. Then, Andreessen Horowitz creates two lists of the top 50 apps: one ranked by independent visits and another ranked by total monthly active users. And it comes as no surprise that the app topping both lists is ChatGPT.

There is some overlap between the two lists, but few apps appear on both. Let's take a closer look at the data.

In the past six months, ChatGPT has held the top spot by a significant margin in terms of monthly independent visits. Familiar apps such as Character.ai, Perplexity, Claude, and Suno make up the top five, while JanitorAI, Quillbot, Poe, LinerAI, and CivitAI round out the top ten.

When ranked by total monthly active users, ChatGPT once again takes the top spot, but the top five are completely different. Here, Microsoft Edge, Photomath, Nova, and Bing make up the top five, while Remini, Chat & Ask AI, Brainly, Meitu, and Character.AI complete the top ten lineup.

From this data, we can draw the following conclusions:

Firstly, the data suggests that people primarily use AI for creative activities. Andreessen Horowitz notes that 52% of the apps on both lists are focused on content creation or editing. Most of these are image and video creation apps, but voice and music generators are also popular.

Video creation apps Luna and Viggle make their first appearance on the list of highest monthly visits, ranking 14th and 21st respectively, indicating a clear interest in AI-generated videos. Music generator Suno also made the list previously, but has jumped from 36th to 5th place this time.

It is understandable that people are interested in AI applications that can create photos, sounds, or music, but the apps they choose to subscribe to tell a different story. The apps with the most monthly active users are mostly multi-functional AI apps like ChatGPT, Bing, or Microsoft Edge, or specialized apps like PhotoMath.

It will be worth noting whether these subscribers remain active during the summer vacation, as PhotoMath is likely to see a surge in demand from students seeking math help towards the end of the year.

Andreessen Horowitz also points out that there is a rise in non-image-based generative applications. On the last list six months ago, almost all generative apps were image-based. On this list, image generators only make up 41% of generative applications.