ChatGPT's 'Novelty' Is Wearing Off as Traffic Drops Nearly 10% in June — What Happened?

The renowned and revolutionary AI chatbot, ChatGPT, has seen its first-ever user decline last June, according to new studies and analytics behind the technology.

Since its release in late 2022, the chatbot has seen a significant rise in userbase and traffic, with the AI not faltering since it was introduced to the public.

While this does not mean any changes to ChatGPT's capabilities and features, it shows how much people have lessened their use of the chatbot amidst the different restrictions.

ChatGPT Is No Longer as Famous as Before?

A recent report from Similarweb shared analytics on ChatGPT's performance last month, and it is not good news for the company, as the famed AI website's worldwide traffic fell to nearly 10%.

The report noted that desktop and mobile web traffic to the ChatGPT website, chat.openai.com, dropped 9.7% from May to June. The month-over-month decline in the United States was reportedly 10.3%.

Its unique visitors worldwide also dropped 5.7%, with the visitors' amount of time spent on the website falling to 8.5%. This was the first month that ChatGPT's traffic growth actually declined.

Since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the world, it has seen staggering growth and interactions as many have indulged in the advancements and wonders brought by AI.

According to Engadget, Sensor Tower also released a report regarding a decline in the downloads of the ChatGPT by iOS users in June after peaking earlier in the month.

What Is Happening to ChatGPT?

While there is currently nothing wrong with ChatGPT, this only reflects how much interaction and traffic it saw in the past month, seeing a drop in the patronage of the AI chatbot.

ChatGPT remains feature-packed with what OpenAI introduced in the past weeks and months, including its GPT-4 version and ability to connect to the internet for better results and outputs.

OpenAI and ChatGPT

While ChatGPT sees its first-ever decline since it was released, the most famous AI chatbot is still widely available in the market, from web browsers to its dedicated app.

However, it also saw several copycats or competitors in the market, including the one from Chinese company Baidu, who claimed that the Ernie AI chatbot is better than OpenAI's tech. ChatGPT has faced scrutiny and heavy criticism from the public for disseminating fake news and information.

Recently, two lawyers and a law firm have been fined $5,000 each by a federal judge after submitting fake legal research in an aviation injury claim, as they blamed the AI language model ChatGPT for the incident. They noted that they made a good faith mistake in failing to recognize that the AI chatbot could generate fictitious cases.

ChatGPT is still not perfect, and OpenAI continues developing and improving the AI technology it introduced. It is unknown how this recent drop would affect the AI chatbot, but it surely is a dent to OpenAI's long-running streak of ChatGPT's success in the market.