Morning Edition · Friday, July 17, 2026Published at 1:29 AM EDT · New York
AI Companion Apps Have Been Downloaded 165 Million Times Since ChatGPT Launched, Appfigures Finds
The virtual-partner category, much of it explicit, has become a measurable consumer market with real spending, per data cited by Decrypt.
Virtual-partner applications have been downloaded about 165 million times across the App Store and Google Play since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, the AI ML Big Data channel reports, citing analytics firm Appfigures via Decrypt. The figure…
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Part of a tracked trend
AI Companionship as a Consumer Market
AI companion apps establish direct-to-consumer subscription demand as a durable revenue base, while age and content governance become the recurring risk that gates the category's growth.
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