After a rapid rise in popularity in late 2022 and early 2023, it looks like ChatGPT is starting to lose popularity. According to the data of Internet analytics of Similarweb, mobile and desktop traffic on the ChatGPT website fell by 9.7% worldwide in June. This is reported by The Washington Post.
If Similarweb's data is accurate, this drop marks the first time an OpenAI chatbot has experienced a decline in users. In June, app tracker Sensor Tower also saw a drop in downloads of ChatGPT's iOS client after a peak earlier in the month.
Declining interest in ChatGPT appears to be part of an industry trend. Data from Similarweb shows that fewer people are visiting the desktop and mobile websites of Microsoft Bing, Google Bard and Character.AI in previous months.
For example, traffic to Microsoft's search engine skyrocketed between February and March when Bing AI became available for public preview. Since then, monthly traffic to the site has steadily declined, returning to almost the level it was before Microsoft launched Bing with GPT-4.
Separately, Similarweb reports that it has seen a drop in ChatGPT user activity: as of May 2023, the number of user minutes decreased by 8.5%.
The Washington Post attributes the decline to the end of the school year, as students are on vacation, so not as many young people are using ChatGPT to write papers. Another reason could be that companies like Samsung are banning employees from using AI chatbots for fear of potential data leaks.
We remind you that recently two authors sued OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, for allegedly using their artwork for the machine learning that underpins the chatbot's artificial intelligence.