Just a few years ago, artificial general intelligence was a niche concept mostly bandied about in tech circles and sci-fi literature. But by mid-2025, global Google searches for the term had soared to nearly 14 million a month. 

Why? 

The short answer is a series of eye-opening AI breakthroughs, amplified by media coverage and tech leader pronouncements, launched the term, commonly referred to as AGI, into the mainstream.

The ChatGPT effect

A major catalyst was the debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. This one event brought conversational AI into the hands of millions. 

The world marveled at ChatGPT’s uncanny human-like responses. Chat quickly became the fastest-growing app in history, reaching 100 million users within two months of launch. It also sparked a hunger to understand where AI is headed. 

By 2023, AI was everywhere. Almost overnight, Chat and similar Gen (for generative) AI bots were writing essays, answers to complex queries, even computer code–creations previously thought to require human intelligence. 

This sudden and most personal exposure to the power of AI made many ask, “If AI can do all this, how far is it from human-level general intelligence?” And there you have it. Global searches for AGI—human-like AI—took off.

Breakthroughs beyond chatbots

The momentum didn’t stop with text-based tools.

In early 2023, OpenAI released GPT-4, a powerful new model that aced professional exams and demonstrated advanced reasoning skills. A Microsoft research paper described it as showing “sparks of AGI,” noting that the AI was performing at human levels in tasks like math, logic, and law.

Other machine learning systems were pushing boundaries too. DeepMind’s AlphaFold  cracked the protein-folding puzzle  that had stumped scientists for 50 years. The challenge was to predict how a chain of amino acids folds into a 3D protein shape, something crucial for understanding biology and disease.  That accomplishment earned its creators a Nobel Prize and proved AI’s promise in accelerating scientific discovery.

Jaw-dropping text-to-image platforms like DALL-E and Midjourney now use deep learning algorithms to generate striking visual art from written prompts. By late 2023, DeepMind released Gemini, a multimodal AI model capable of processing text, images, and audio simultaneously. Gemini also marked the rise of agentic AI—virtual agents capable of taking real-world actions for users.

Each of these milestones moved the conversation along. The public became more curious: Is this how artificial general intelligence begins?

Hype cycles and media amplification

Mainstream media was key in propelling AGI into everyday discussion.

Tech CEOs openly declared AGI their “north star.” Companies including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta have all named AGI as a primary goal. 

Media stories increasingly used “AGI” as shorthand for an AI system as capable as a human being. Forecasts added fuel to the fire. In 2025, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis suggested AGI could arrive within 5–10 years. OpenAI’s Sam Altman went further, hinting at the end of the decade.

When Time and Fortune began asking, “What is AGI? And how will we know when it’s here?” the world paid attention.

Social media amplified the hype. Threads, TikToks, and YouTube explainers—ranging from insightful to alarmist—made AGI a household term. What was once a concept for researchers had become part of public discourse.

The global scope of AGI development

What makes this trend especially striking is how global it has become.

A 2020 survey identified 72 active AGI projects across 37 countries. Since then, the number has grown rapidly.

In the past year alone, major developments emerged from the U.S. (OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic), the UK (DeepMind), France (Mistral AI), and China (Baidu, Alibaba). Nations now view AI as a strategic asset, much like space exploration or nuclear energy. Some have dubbed it the “new space race.”

This global competition ensured that AGI stayed in the headlines from Jakarta to Berlin. A 2024 report from Stanford noted that 78% of global organizations were already using AI tools, up from 55% the previous year.

With AI products spreading to healthcare, finance, education, and beyond, the world naturally grew more interested in general intelligence systems and what they might mean for the future.

From narrow AI to machines that think like us

Perhaps the biggest shift is how we now distinguish between so-called narrow AI and general AI.

For years, narrow AI quietly powered everyday applications from search algorithms to recommendation engines and voice assistants, without much fanfare. These systems were task-specific and limited in scope. 

AGI, however, implies something transformative: a machine capable of performing any intellectual task a human can. As people interact more with smart tools such as AI-generated emails, chatbots, or autonomous transcription services, they naturally begin to wonder: “What happens when these systems become as intelligent as us?” 

It’s a question of our age, with all of its promising and disturbing implications. It’s a threshold that has captured the world’s imagination. And it’s why artificial general intelligence is now one of the most searched, speculated, and debated ideas of our time.