Image AI models now drive app growth, beating chatbot upgrades | TechCrunch

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Image model releases are driving growth for AI mobile apps, generating 6.5 times more downloads than traditional model updates, according to a new report from app intelligence provider Appfigures.

This marks a shift from earlier days, when the release of new models powering the conversational experiences drove more demand, alongside the new features like a voice chat interface .

For instance, ChatGPT and Gemini each added tens of millions of new downloads after releasing their respective image models, Appfigures found.

For Google’s Gemini, the release of its image model Nano Banana drove an additional 22+ million downloads in the 28 days following the introduction of the Gemini 2.5 Flash image model last August. This launch lifted the app’s downloads by more than four times over that period, the data showed.Image Credits: Appfigures

Meanwhile, ChatGPT added more than 12 million incremental installs in the 28 days after the introduction of its GPT-4o image model in March of last year. That’s roughly 4.5 times more downloads than it saw for its GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, and GPT-5 model releases, Appfigures pointed out.

Other model releases followed similar trends, though on a smaller scale. Meta AI’s introduction of its AI video feed Vibes added an estimated 2.6 million incremental downloads in the 28 days after its September 2025 release . (Yes, technically, this is a video model, but it’s ultimately about visual content, not just text.)Image Credits: Appfigures

Still, the report cautioned, additional downloads don’t always translate into increased mobile revenue.Techcrunch event

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