Oliver Marsh calls for an AI version of Google Trends to publicly share usage trends.

Existing audits of chatbot responses can only provide limited insight into AI's social risks; what is truly needed is data like Google Trends, publicly showing how people use AI for information-seeking at trend granularity while protecting privacy. OpenAI's ChatGPT had been used by about 10% of the global adult population by July 2025, 34% of respondents in a Reuters six-country survey use generative AI weekly, and Pew 2026 data shows about half of U.S. adults have used chatbots, with a quarter using them daily. The author cites a 2024 study of German regional elections: when requesting election-related prompt data from Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI, there was no regulatory basis because the EU Digital Services Act Article 40.4 was not yet fully in effect; ultimately only Microsoft provided limited data, showing election-related prompts increasing from 2,000-4,000 per state in August to over 6,000 in September, the election month.