OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the popular chatbot that garnered over 100 million users after launch has seen its first user decline last month. According to a new report from analytics firm Similarweb, desktop and mobile web traffic for ChatGPT dropped 9.7% from May to June. In the US, this month-over-month decline was 10.3%.
The website experienced a 5.7% decline in its global unique visitors, and the amount of time visitors spent on the site decreased to 8.5%. While this data doesn’t take away anything from ChatGPT’s capabilities, it does suggest that the emergence of other chatbots is slowly pulling users away from ChatGPT.
According to SimilarWeb’s senior insights manager David Carr, the decline in traffic indicates that the novelty of the chatbot is fading. On the other hand, RBC capital markets analyst Rishi Jaluria interprets the data as a sign of increased demand for generative AI with real-time information.
Novelty wears off
“Whether OpenAI management is brokenhearted about the dip in traffic is debatable. Initially launched as a technology demo, the ChatGPT website primarily serves as a loss leader generating sales leads for OpenAI, which makes its technology available for other companies to embed in their applications,” SimilarWeb writes.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also described the cost of operating the mostly free service (ChatGPT 3.5) as “eye-watering” – some reports estimates it costs about $700,000 per day.
The AI company provides API access to more customisable versions of its software to other technology companies and corporate enterprises. This led to a 3.1% increase in traffic to the platform from May to June.
SimilarWeb also suggests that this drop in interest shows that novelty has worn off for ChatGPT and perhaps for AI chatbots in general. OpenAI and other AI companies may need to amp up their effort in adding more features to their chatbots.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
