GSM basically only ever appears in print. If someone DOES ask "what does 120 gram mean here?" the clarification is going to be "Oh that's grams per square meter" and not "Oh that's gee es em"
I should mention GSM is also probably an americanism. I'm in the EU and out of the five packs of different kinds of art paper four are labeled in g/m2, and one has no labeled weight at all. None of them are marked in GSM as that abbreviation only works in english, while g/m2 works in all languages.