Google users were far more interested in looking up artificial intelligence (AI) than “Bitcoin” or “crypto” this year, according to data from Google Trends.
Since 2020, search interest for “Bitcoin” and, occasionally, “crypto” had managed to outpace searches for “AI,” however, Google’s data shows this started to flip around August 2022.
Searches for “AI” broke out around November 2022, the same month that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was launched, and has widened the gap from crypto-related search terms since.
Worldwide search interest in “AI” currently commands a Google Trends score of 91, while Bitcoin sits at 22. Google scores search terms from 0 to 100 based on a topic’s proportion to total searches across all topics.
The results may not come as a surprise, as Bitcoin (BTC) has continued to suffer from the tail-end of a bear market cycle lasting for the latter half of 2021 and most of 2022. However, it began regaining lost ground over the course of this year.
Bitcoin began the year at $16,900 — far below its all-time high of $68,729 on Nov. 11, 2021, but has since gained around 150% to reach a price of $43,400 at the time of publication, per CoinMarketCap data.
Google Trends shows Bitcoin saw the most interest from El Salvador, Nigeria, Netherlands, Brazil, and Switzerland.
On the other hand, artificial intelligence had a banner year for developments, ranging from fears that AI could take actors’ jobs, a proliferation of AI nude services, and excitement over new chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Bard, Meta AI and GrokAI — the latter of which was launched by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Google Trend data shows particular interest in AI from users in Vietnam, China, the Philippines and Myanmar.
Crypto X (formerly Twitter) user Autism Capital was among the first to point out the trend in a Dec. 26 post addressed to their 249,900 followers.
One of the comments on the post suggested the disparity was due to Bitcoin and crypto being a relatively older point of interest when compared to AI — meaning that people have already extensively looked up the crypto terms in prior years.
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In July, AI also became a clear-cut winner among job seekers, according to analysis from crypto data aggregator CoinGecko.
It found that the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 led to a surge in searches for “AI jobs” — beating out searches for “crypto jobs” four times over.
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