Image AI Models Now Drive App Growth, Beating Chatbot Upgrades
Appfigures finds visual model launches generate 6.5x more downloads — but most don’t convert that spike into revenue.
TL;DR
- Image model releases are now the main driver of AI mobile app growth, generating 6.5 times more downloads than traditional model updates.
- ChatGPT and Gemini saw significant download boosts after introducing their respective image models.
- The release of Gemini's Nano Banana image model drove over 22 million downloads in 28 days.
- ChatGPT's GPT-4o image model launch resulted in over 12 million incremental installs in 28 days.
- Meta AI's Vibes video model added an estimated 2.6 million downloads.
- Increased downloads from new image models do not always translate into higher mobile revenue.
- ChatGPT was the only app among the examples that successfully converted increased attention into significant consumer spending, with an estimated $70 million.
- DeepSeek R1's 28 million downloads were driven by curiosity about its cost-effective AI model training techniques, not an image model release.