First time since its launch, ChatGPT registers drop in user traffic

ChatGPT, the popular generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform which was launched in November last year has seen its first drop in user traffic in the month of June, a Reuters report said citing an analytics firm Similarweb.

While the desktop and mobile traffic to the ChatGPT website saw a decline of 9.7 per cent in June, the number of unique visitors plunged by 5.7 per cent. The amount of time visitors spent on the platform also dropped by 8.5 per cent, the data showed.

Talking about the development, Similarweb's Senior Insights Manager David Carr was quoted in the Reuters report as saying that the novelty factor around ChatGPT is waning. So far, OpenAI has not shared its reactions to the development.

ChatGPT kickstarted a rush to use generative AI technology to complete routine tasks, which included writing articles to software codes. The craze for the platform catapulted it to 100 million active monthly users in January, just two months after its launch.

With a monthly user base of 1.5 billion, ChatGPT is among the fastest-growing consumer applications ever and features among the top twenty websites in the world. For example, ChatGPT is far ahead of Microsoft's own search engine Bing. Notably, Bing uses OpenAI's technology to refine its search results.

Competitors like Google's Bard have also marked their entry into the space to rival the dominance of ChatGPT.

Moreover, OpenAI also released the ChatGPT application for the iOS system in May which may take some traffic away from its website. Some industry experts said that the dip in usage could also be related to the summer breaks as fewer students take help from the AI platform to complete their homework.

According to data.ai, the chatbot was downloaded by more than 17 million iOS users as of July 4, the Reuters report added.

(With inputs from Agencies)