Even with comparable model quality, user experience details create significant product stickiness for LLMs. Google's Gemini feels much slower than ChatGPT, and ChatGPT's mobile app includes satisfying haptic feedback. This superior, faster-feeling UX is a key differentiator that causes users to churn back from competitors.

Unlike social networks where user-generated content creates strong lock-in, AI chatbots have a fragile hold on users. A user switching from ChatGPT to Gemini experienced no loss from features like personalization or memory. Since the "content" is AI-generated, a competitor with a superior model can immediately offer a better product, suggesting a duopoly is more likely than a monopoly.

While ChatGPT is still the leader with 600-700 million monthly active users, Google's Gemini has quickly scaled to 400 million. This rapid adoption signals that the AI landscape is not a monopoly and that user preference is diversifying quickly between major platforms.

Unlike traditional APIs, LLMs are hard to abstract away. Users develop a preference for a specific model's 'personality' and performance (e.g., GPT-4 vs. 3.5), making it difficult for applications to swap out the underlying model without user notice and pushback.

Unlike sticky cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP), LLMs are easily interchangeable via APIs, leading to customer "promiscuity." This commoditizes the model layer and forces providers like OpenAI to build defensible moats at the application layer (e.g., ChatGPT) where they can own the end user.

Sam Altman argues that beyond model quality, ChatGPT's stickiest advantage is personalization. He believes as the AI learns a user's context and preferences, it creates a valuable relationship that is difficult for competitors to displace. He likens this deep-seated loyalty to picking a toothpaste brand for life.

By integrating into the enterprise workflow through licenses and custom models, ChatGPT creates a powerful daily habit for millions of employees. This work-based usage spills over into personal life, reinforcing its position as the default AI tool and making it harder for consumer-only competitors to break through.

Despite ChatGPT building features like Memory and Custom Instructions to create lock-in, users are switching to competitors like Gemini and not missing them. This suggests the consumer AI market is more fragile and less of a winner-take-all monopoly than previously believed, as switching costs are currently very low.

Gemini is converting daily ChatGPT users not just with model capabilities, but with superior UX like better response sizing and perceived speed. Crucially, the trust in the Google brand for search is transferring to its AI, making users more confident in its reliability, even with less complex reasoning.