ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot launch in November, saw monthly traffic to its website and unique visitors decline for the first time ever in June, according to analytics firm Similarweb.
Worldwide desktop and mobile traffic to the ChatGPT website decrease by 9.7% in June from May and unique visitors to ChatGPT’s website drop 5.7%.
The amount of time visitors spent on the website was also down 8.5%, the data shows.
Decreasing traffic is a sign of the chatbot’s novelty wearing off, said Similarweb’s Senior Insights Manager David Carr and RBC Capital Markets analyst Rishi Jaluria explain the data points to more demand for generative AI with real-time information.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
ChatGPT set off a frenzied use of generative AI in daily tasks from writing to coding and reached 100 million monthly active users in January, two months after its launch.
It is the fastest-growing consumer application ever, and now boasts over 1.5 billion monthly visits, one of the top 20 websites in the world.
ChatGPT has far surpass Bing, the search engine run by Microsoft which uses OpenAI’s technology.
A few ChatGPT competitors, including Google’s Bard chatbot, have launch in the past few months.
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Microsoft’s search engine Bing also provides chatbot power by OpenAI to users for free.
OpenAI also release the ChatGPT app on the iOS system in May, which could sap some traffic from its website.
Some also tie the usage change to the summer break for schools, as fewer students look for help with homework.
The chatbot was download more than 17 million on iOS globally as of 4th July 2023, according to data.ai.
The analytics firm said downloads peak on 31st May 2023 and has remain popular in the U.S., averaging 530,000 downloads per week in its first six full weeks of availability.
The recent slowdown in growth might help control the cost in running ChatGPT, which requires intensive computing power to answer queries.
Sam Altman, chief executive at OpenAI, has describe the cost of running the services “eye-watering“.
ChatGPT is free to use but also provides a premium subscription, where users can pay $20 (approx. Rs. 1,600) a month to access OpenAI’s more advance model, GPT-4.
Some 1.5 million people have sign up for the subscription in the U.S., according to the latest estimates from YipitData.
OpenAI has project $200 million (approx. Rs. 1,644 crore) in revenue this year.
Other than ChatGPT, it makes money by selling API access to its AI models for developers and enterprises directly and through a partnership with Microsoft, which invest over $10 billion into the company.
