Artificial intelligence has officially become part of our daily lives: our approach to AI, however, is changing and the time of use increases constantly. According to a report by the Sensor Tower analysis platform, in the first half of 2025, in Italy artificial intelligence apps (such as chatgpt and other applications to create images and videos) were used for 254 million hours (about 4.31 hours each, if all 58.9 million Italians actually used it).
But the thing that perhaps surprises most concerns the topics of discussion with the chatbots: in recent years, in fact, the focus has moved from work activities (support in programming, suggestions in writing and editing etc.) to what is called “lifestyle & entertainment”. In short, artificial intelligence is becoming a real assistant for our personal life, to which to ask for advice on all kinds of arguments, from shopping to social relationships and food regimes.
So here is a photograph on how the use of artificial intelligence and time of use is changing.
What users ask for artificial intelligence
Our way of using artificial intelligence is changing: if in the first half of 2024 73.5% of users had to do with work and education, while only 22% concerned themes of lifestyle (including health, nutrition or advice on social relationships). In the first six months of this year, however, the questions to the AI are definitely increased with lifestyle and wellness issues, which now affect the total for 34.6% (+12.6 percentage points compared to 2024).
This change is clearly visible in the ranking of the most requested topics at AI: 9 of the first 10 categories are falling within “Lifestyle & Entertainment”, including well -being and health (+1.9%compared to 2024), updates on politics (+1.7%), but also travel (+1%) and advice on social relations (+0.6%).
For the moment, however, the most used app remains that of Chatgpt, which exceeded 940 million download from its launch in 2022: second place for Google Gemini (200 million) and third for Deepseek (127 million), which despite the blockage imposed in some countries (including Italy) continues to collect success especially in Asia.
How long we dedicate to AI in Italy
Instead, looking at the time we dedicate to AI, in the first semester 2025 in Italy users totaled 254 million hours of use, with 8.64 billion sessions. To be clear, if each of the 58.9 million Italians used the AI, it would be about 146 sessions for each inhabitant, with an average of 4.31 hours each.
It is an important fact, considering that the time spent on artificial intelligence apps has increased from one year to another by over 76%: in Italy, therefore, we dedicate the triple of the time to the AI compared to what happened just 12 months ago. Clearly, this increase is also to be attributed to the improvement of artificial intelligence models over the last year.
Clearly, the time of use is closely related to the increase in downloads to the apps, which in Italy exceeded 18.5 million (upon growth of 26.7% compared to 2024).
On the global level, however, users spent 15.6 billion hours on artificial intelligence apps, equal to over 86 million hours a day. The total number of sessions for the generative IA apps reached 426 billion in the first half of 2025. To understand, it is an average of about 50 sessions for each person on earth.
Chagpt against Google: those who attract multiple users globally
But then, are artificial intelligence apps overcoming search engines like Google? For the moment it is not yet so: Google maintains its monopoly as a reference point for the search for information, with an average of over 18 days of use by users in June 2025.
In terms of constant use, therefore, chatgpt and the other assistants Ai have not yet completely replaced search engines such as Google: however, there is the growth of the artificial intelligence model of Openai, which between June 2023 and June 2025 went from an average of monthly use of 5 days to an average of 13.2 days, increasingly approaching Google (18.6) and social media as (13.7) and even exceeding Reddit (12.2) and Threads (9.5).
