ChatGPT Monthly Traffic Decline
Data Shows Decline in ChatGPT Traffic
Analyst firm SimilarWeb reports that ChatGPT, a popular chatbot launched in November, lost monthly traffic in June for the first time in its site’s history.
Similar web data showed that global demand for desktop and mobile visits was down 9.7% in June compared to May, while the total number of site users was down 5.7%. The time visitors spent browsing the site also decreased by 8.5%.
ChatGPT sparked a surge in the use of generative AI in everyday tasks from traditional typing to writing cryptographic codes, reaching 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after its launch.
Fastest Growing Application
It is the fastest growing app ever offered to users, boasting 1.5 billion visits per month and is ranked among the top 20 websites in the world.
For example, the number of visits to ChatGPT far exceeds the number of visits to the Bing search engine, which is run by Microsoft, an OpenAI proponent that uses its technology.
Possible Negative Factors
Also in May, OpenAI released the ChatGPT app for the Apple iOS operating system, which may distract some visitors from the website. Some also attribute the change in the number of users to the summer holidays in schools, when fewer students will ask for help with homework.
The recent slowdown in growth could help control the cost of running GPT Chat, which requires huge computing resources to respond to queries. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, described the costs of maintaining the services as “huge”.
ChatGPT is free to use, but it also offers a premium subscription for which users can pay $20 per month to enjoy the services of the most advanced GPT-4 model. IbIt Data estimates that more than half a million people signed up for the subscription.
OpenAI expects to generate $200 million in revenue this year. In addition to ChatGPT, the company makes money by selling access to its AI models through APIs directly to developers and companies, as well as through a partnership with Microsoft, which has invested more than $10 billion in the startup.
