Politics

ChatGPT Monthly Website Traffic Declines for First Time

JUL 7 2023·Updated FEB 2 2024

Story

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Facts

In June, AI chatbot ChatGPT’s monthly traffic to its website, and its total unique visitors, declined for the first time since OpenAI launched it in November, according to the data company Similarweb.
Reuters
Worldwide traffic to both the desktop and mobile versions decreased by 9.7% from May to June, while unique visitors to the ChatGPT website decreased by 5.7%.
Reuters
ChatGPT grew quickly after its launch, with more than 100M active users in January.
MINT
Even with the slowdown, ChatGPT currently sits at more than 1.5B monthly visits and ranks among the top 20 websites worldwide.
MINT
Since its launch, ChatGPT has faced competition from Google's Bard chatbot and Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which offers a chatbot powered by OpenAI technology.
Business Outreach

Sources Split

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RIGHT

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ESTAB

The Spin

Narrative A

While the launch of OpenAI's app might’ve brought website traffic down a bit, and competitors may have siphoned off some of ChatGPT’s audience, the biggest factor for the decline was the end of school. Fewer kids searching for homework help means fewer visits to the site. This will all be rectified in the fall when kids return to the classrooms.

Mashable

Narrative B

ChatGPT has more problems than kids on summer vacation and competitors challenging it. The chatbot continues to attempt to pass off false information as true, and there doesn’t seem to be a quick fix. Companies and individuals also have privacy concerns over inputting data into the chatbot. ChatGPT is going to have to work to win back its earlier popularity.