Newsletter
ChatGPT, the AI (Artificial Intelligence) sensation that took the world by storm with a blockbuster debut in November last year, seems to be losing steam. According to analytics firm Similarweb, the AI chatbot has seen a drop in traffic for three consecutive months since peaking in May. The average time spent on the website by users has also declined in recent months.
ChatGPT (chat.openai.com) became the world’s fastest-growing website shortly after it burst onto the scene. The platform registered more than 1.8 billion visits in May 2023. However, it hasn’t been the same since that peak. The AI chatbot has seen a steady decline in usage in the following months, with the total worldwide visits dropping to 1.4 billion in August.
Moreover, visitors are now spending less time on the website than before. In March, users spent an average of 8.7 minutes on the ChatGPT site. By the end of August, the average time came down to 7 minutes (via Reuters). All of this suggests the ChatGPT craze has started to die down. Perhaps the emergence of multiple competing platforms has hit traffic to OpenAI’s chatbot.
That said, there are signs that ChatGPT’s decline is coming to an end. The new report says that the platform saw an approximately ten percent drop in visits to its website in both June and July. However, the decline in August was a lot less steep at just over three percent. Similarweb speculates that school holidays in the US may have affected the ChatGPT traffic in June and July.
The US school holidays may have affected the ChatGPT traffic
The firm backs up the speculation with some US-specific data, the country that contributes to almost ten percent of the overall traffic to the platform. The decline in the US began in May and continued till July, with a ten percent, 15 percent, and four percent drop in the three months, respectively. But with schools opening in August, ChatGPT usage rebounded.
This suggests students have started using the AI tool again. We may get a clear picture once the data for September is in. However, ChatGPT usage may not decline any further. The report states that unique visitors to the website rose three percent month-over-month in the US and 0.3 percent worldwide in August, reaching 180.5 million globally. The number of unique visitors had also fallen in June and July.
“The percentage of ChatGPT users in the 18-24-year-old age bracket dropped over the summer, particularly in the US – and might be expected to recover further in September with more students back in school,” wrote David F. Carr, a senior insights manager at Similarweb. Google Bard is already giving ChatGPT tough competition in the AI chatbot market. It remains to be seen which of the two comes out on top in the long run.
