ChatGPT, the popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot introduced by OpenAI in November, observed a consecutive third-month decline in monthly website traffic during August. However, signs of a potential turnaround have emerged, as reported by Similarweb, an analytics firm. On a global scale, the combined desktop and mobile visits to the ChatGPT website experienced a 3.2 per cent reduction in August, dwindling to 1.43 billion. This followed approximately 10 per cent drops in traffic during each of the preceding two months. Concurrently, the average duration visitors spent on the site dwindled from an average of 8.7 minutes in March to 7 minutes in August.
Nonetheless, there was a slight uptick in the number of unique visitors in August, climbing from 180 million to 180.5 million users worldwide.
The imminent return of students to schools in September may offer a respite for ChatGPT's dwindling traffic and usage, with indications that some educational institutions are beginning to embrace the platform. Notably, US ChatGPT traffic experienced a modest upswing in August, coinciding with the reopening of American schools.
As reported by Reuters, David F. Carr, a regular tracker of ChatGPT and its competitors at Similarweb, remarked, "The resurgence in students seeking homework assistance appears to be a contributing factor: the percentage of younger users on the platform declined over the summer and is now displaying signs of recovery."
ChatGPT made headlines by rapidly gaining popularity for its utility in various everyday tasks, including editing and coding, amassing 100 million monthly active users by January, a mere two months after its launch. Leveraging generative AI technology, which harnesses past data to generate new content such as essays and poems, ChatGPT stood as the fastest-growing consumer application prior to Meta's Threads launch, and it currently ranks among the top 30 websites globally.
This year has witnessed the emergence of several competitors to ChatGPT, notably Google's Bard chatbot, and Microsoft's search engine Bing also features a ChatGPT-powered chatbot available for free.
In a move to expand its reach, OpenAI introduced the ChatGPT app for iOS in May, potentially diverting some traffic away from its website. While ChatGPT remains accessible for free, it also offers a premium subscription priced at $20 per month.
Apart from ChatGPT, OpenAI generates revenue by selling access to its AI models directly to developers and enterprises, both independently and through a partnership with Microsoft, which invested more than $10 billion into the company.