ChatGPT users fall for first time amid 'growing pains'

Worldwide desktop and mobile traffic to the ChatGPT website decreased by 9.7% in June from May, while unique visitors to ChatGPT’s website dropped 5.7%. The amount of time visitors spent on the website was also down 8.5%

Wed, 05 Jul, 2023 - 20:59

ChatGPT, the wildly popular AI chatbot launched in November, saw monthly traffic to its website and unique visitors decline for the first time ever in June, according to analytics firm Similarweb.

ChatGPT set off a frenzied use of generative AI in daily tasks from writing to coding and reached 100m monthly active users in January, two months after its launch.

It is the fastest-growing consumer application ever, and now boasts over 1.5bn monthly visits, one of the top 20 websites in the world.

For instance, ChatGPT has far surpassed Bing, the search engine run by Microsoft which uses OpenAI's technology.

A few ChatGPT competitors, including Google's Bard chatbot, have been launched in the past few months. Microsoft's search engine Bing also provides chatbot powered by OpenAI to users for free.

"I think there are growing pains when you go from zero to 100m users that quickly," said said Sarah Hindlian-Bowler at Macquarie.

"It's a combination of having to change what the model is trained on and having to deal with the potential implications of regulation," she said.

OpenAI also released 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 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 described the cost of running the services "eye-watering".

ChatGPT is free to use but also provides a premium subscription, where users can pay to access OpenAI's more advanced model, GPT-4. Some 1.5m people have signed up for the subscription.