AI assistants in Italy: adoption consolidates as usage fragments

The data, analysed by Sensemakers from a 40,000-person Comscore panel for Netcomm FOCUS and released on 20 October 2026 (Adnkronos, Media Key; the original report does not appear on the Sensemakers or Netcomm websites), show that in August 2026 the estimated unique visitors to artificial intelligence assistants in Italy reached 18.9 million, up from about nine million in January 2025. These are panel-based estimates, not absolute counts. Penetration among the online population rose from 20% at the start of 2025 to 40%. The adoption curve is flattening: the increase was nine percentage points in the first half of 2025 and two points in the first half of 2026. According to the analysis, penetration in the other countries used for comparison ranges between 44% and 46%. The available summaries do not say which countries were chosen, nor whether the unique-visitor count includes mobile app usage or web browsing only. In May 2026 the age group with the highest penetration was 25 to 34 year olds (55.6%), while the longest average usage time belonged to 18 to 24 year olds, at 123 minutes a month.

Looking at individual platforms, ChatGPT recorded 13.9 million unique visitors in August 2026. Its share of the total assistant audience fell from around 90% in mid-2025 to 74%, while Google Gemini passed nine million visitors. Usage is spreading across several tools: roughly one visitor in 3.5 uses at least two assistants in the same month, compared with one in six in the previous period. Since June 2025 mobile access has outpaced desktop: in the first half of 2026 there was an average of 12.2 million mobile visitors against 10.7 million on desktop. Desktop use, however, shows a higher average monthly time: 78 minutes versus 47.

The audience reached by AI summaries in search engines is larger than that of dedicated assistants: more than 20 million Italians see these panels on Google and Bing. In June 2026 such summaries appeared in 22% of desktop Google searches in Italy, compared with 8% in April 2025. Commenting on the spread of the technology, Sensemakers chief operating officer Antonio Pepe said that "adoption on such a large scale can quickly redefine the rules of the market". In the United States, meanwhile, advertising is gaining ground: between March and June 2026 the share of ChatGPT conversations about video games and consoles carrying sponsored ads rose from 3% to 47%, about toys and hobbies from 5% to 24%, and about books, music and video from 9% to 22%. The sources do not document whether this extends to Italy.

The expansion of artificial intelligence bears the marks of an ordinary stabilisation: the curiosity phase is giving way to use spread across more tools, while AI summaries in search engines already reach more people than the assistants themselves. It remains to be seen whether the arrival of advertising in conversations, so far documented only in the United States, will change how reliable the answers are perceived to be. — Olya