https://www.reuters.com/technology/booming-traffic-openais-chatgpt-posts-first-ever-monthly-dip-june-similarweb-2023-07-05/

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ChatGPT's explosive growth shows first decline in traffic since
launch

By Krystal Hu
July 5, 20239:06 PM UTCUpdated ago

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Illustration picture of ChatGPT
The logo of OpenAI is displayed near a response by its AI chatbot
ChatGPT on its website, in this illustration picture taken February
9, 2023. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration/File Photo

July 5 (Reuters) - ChatGPT, the wildly popular AI chatbot launched in
November, saw monthly traffic to its website and unique visitors
decline for the first time ever in June, according to analytics firm
Similarweb.

Worldwide desktop and mobile traffic to the ChatGPT website decreased
by 9.7% in June from May, while unique visitors to ChatGPT's website
dropped 5.7%. The amount of time visitors spent on the website was
also down 8.5%, the data shows.

Decreasing traffic is a sign of the chatbot's novelty wearing off,
said Similarweb's Senior Insights Manager David Carr, while RBC
Capital Markets analyst Rishi Jaluria explained the data points to
more demand for generative AI with real-time information.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ChatGPT set off a frenzied use of generative AI in daily tasks from
writing to coding and reached 100 million monthly active users in
January, two months after its launch.

It is the fastest-growing consumer application ever, and now boasts
over 1.5 billion monthly visits, one of the top 20 websites in the
world.

For instance, ChatGPT has far surpassed Bing, the search engine run
by Microsoft (MSFT.O) which uses OpenAI's technology.

A few ChatGPT competitors, including Google's (GOOGL.O) Bard chatbot,
have been launched in the past few months. Microsoft's search engine
Bing also provides chatbot powered by OpenAI to users for free.

"I think there are growing pains when you go from zero to 100 million
users that quickly. The extraordinarily heavy infrastructure would
result in less accuracy. It's a combination of having to change what
the model is trained on and having to deal with the potential
implications of regulation," said Sarah Hindlian-Bowler, head of
Technology Research Americas at Macquarie.

OpenAI also released the ChatGPT app on the iOS system in May, which
could sap some traffic from its website. Some also tie the usage
change to the summer break for schools, as fewer students look for
help with homework.

The chatbot was downloaded more than 17 million on iOS globally as of
July 4, according to data.ai.

The analytics firm said downloads peaked on May 31 and has remained
popular in the U.S., averaging 530,000 downloads per week in its
first six full weeks of availability.

The recent slowdown in growth might help control the cost in running
ChatGPT, which requires intensive computing power to answer queries.
Sam Altman, chief executive at OpenAI, has described the cost of
running the services "eye-watering".

ChatGPT is free to use but also provides a premium subscription,
where users can pay $20 a month to access OpenAI's more advanced
model, GPT-4. Some 1.5 million people have signed up for the
subscription in the U.S., according to the latest estimates from
YipitData.

OpenAI has projected $200 million in revenue this year. Besides
ChatGPT, it makes money by selling API access to its AI models for
developers and enterprises directly and through a partnership with
Microsoft, which invested over $10 billion into the company.

Reporting by Krystal Hu in New York and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru;
Editing by David Gregorio and Sriraj Kalluvila

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Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.


 
[2f90d562-6]
Krystal Hu

Thomson Reuters

Krystal reports on venture capital and startups for Reuters. She
covers Silicon Valley and beyond through the lens of money and
characters, with a focus on growth-stage startups, tech investments
and AI. She has previously covered M&A for Reuters, breaking stories
on Trump's SPAC and Elon Musk's Twitter financing. Previously, she
reported on Amazon for Yahoo Finance, and her investigation of the
company's retail practice was cited by lawmakers in Congress. Krystal
started a career in journalism by writing about tech and politics in
China. She has a master's degree from New York University, and enjoys
a scoop of Matcha ice cream as much as getting a scoop at work.

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