When ChatGPT made its debut on the cultural landscape, we couldn’t get enough of it. The novelty of carrying on a conversation with a generative artificial intelligence that seemed almost human was the stuff of science fiction, even if that AI did sometimes resemble 2001’s H.A.L.
While the fascination with generative AI is still going strong, the bloom might be coming off a rose a bit for the groundbreaker in this industry. A study by web analytics firm Similar Web found that worldwide traffic to ChatGPT fell 9.7% in June—and the total number of unique visitors was down 5.7%.
That’s the first decline the chatbot has seen since its wildly successful introduction in November 2022. And the dip in the U.S. was even bigger than the global decline, with usage falling 10.3%
However, it’s not just ChatGPT. Character.AI, the second most popular AI chatbot standalone site, saw its worldwide visits drop 32% month-over-month. The study notes that traffic at that site is still up considerably from where it was in June 2022, when it was getting started.
“The drop in interest not only for ChatGPT but one of its key competitors is a sign that the novelty has worn off for AI chat,” Similar Web wrote. “Chatbots will have to prove their worth, rather than taking it for granted, from here on out.”
Even with the decline, ChatGPT remains the most visited site providing an AI-powered chatbot by a wide range. It also gets more worldwide traffic than Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which recently launched its own GPT-powered chatbot.
Visits to the OpenAI site came in at 1.8 billion in June. Bing attracted 1.25 billion visits.
Google’s Bard chatbot does not yet fall among the top-three visited generative AI sites in Similar Web’s rankings. That could change soon, though.
As ChatGPT usage fell, Bard’s strapped itself to a rocket engine, rising 187% in June. In May, Bard attracted 142.6 million visitors, up from 49.7 million in April (Bard and Bing’s AI have advantages over ChatGPT, Similar Web notes, since they are built on top of search engines and have access to that data).
While visits to ChatGPT’s site have flattened, that’s not a sign that interest in AI is waning. The money OpenAI makes from subscribers to that site (and free visits) is a rounding error combined to the income it generates from licensing the technology to other companies, including Microsoft. Offering the tech to anyone who wants to experiment or play with it, though, creates word of mouth, which often leads to more API deals.
“OpenAI launched ChatGPT as a technology demo at the end of November, expecting it to make a splash but not anticipating how fast it would grow or how big it would get,” the study writes. “The company has an opportunity to build it into a major consumer platform, but based on its existing partnership with Microsoft and other deals it has been cutting, it may be more inclined and equipped to be a technology provider to others.”
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