JAKARTA - The ChatGPT application experienced a surge in deletion or uninstall in the United States of up to 295 percent daily on Saturday, February 28, 2026. The surge occurred shortly after news of OpenAI's cooperation with the US Department of Defense surfaced, an institution that is now being rebranded by the Donald Trump administration as the Department of War.
The data comes from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. For comparison, in the last 30 days before the news came out, ChatGPT's daily uninstall rate averaged only about 9 percent. In other words, this time the market response is not a normal fluctuation.
Not only the uninstall jumped, but the growth of ChatGPT downloads was also hit. App downloads in the US fell 13 percent daily on Saturday after the announcement of the cooperation became public. On Sunday, the decline continued by 5 percent. While the day before, Friday, before the news of the cooperation was announced, ChatGPT downloads actually rose 14 percent daily.
On the other hand, OpenAI's competitor, Anthropic with its product Claude, is enjoying momentum. After the company announced it would not partner with the US Department of Defense, Claude downloads in the US rose 37 percent on Friday and jumped 51 percent on Saturday, according to Sensor Tower.
Anthropic said the failure to reach an agreement was due to concerns about the potential use of AI for surveillance of American citizens and the development of fully autonomous weapons. The company assessed that current AI technology is not ready to be used safely for these purposes.
Data shows that some consumers seem to respond positively to the attitude. Claude even took the number one position on the US App Store on Saturday, March 2, jumping more than 20 ranks compared to about a week earlier.
Another data firm, Appfigures, confirmed this trend. They noted that Claude's total daily downloads in the US on Saturday for the first time exceeded ChatGPT. Appfigures' estimates even showed that Claude's downloads in the US increased by 88 percent daily on Saturday.
Claude is also listed as the number one free iPhone app in six other countries, including Belgium, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland.
On the user sentiment side, the impact is visible in the review column. Sensor Tower recorded a 775 percent spike in one-star reviews for ChatGPT on Saturday, followed by another 100 percent increase on Sunday. On the other hand, five-star reviews fell 50 percent in the same period.
Another data provider, Similarweb, said that Claude's downloads in the US in the past week were about 20 times higher than in January. However, they cautioned that the surge could be influenced by other factors beyond political issues.
This phenomenon shows how the strategic decisions of AI companies now not only impact business contracts, but also public perception. In an era when artificial intelligence is increasingly entering the private space of users, partnerships with military institutions are a sensitive issue.
For OpenAI, cooperation with the government could mean access to funding and strategic legitimacy. For some users, it could raise concerns about the ethical direction and use of technology.
The app market moves fast, and this time consumers' reactions show that corporate choices in the AI landscape are no longer just a technical matter, but also a matter of value and trust.
In a sentiment-driven digital economy, one announcement can shift millions of downloads in a matter of days. AI may be about algorithms, but its adoption remains very human: influenced by trust, anxiety, and moral choices.
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