Almost every day, new apps and technologies are created with the potential to change the world. Few do. And few have the explosive growth that ChatGPT, an AI-powered text-based chatbot, has experienced since its November launch. But now, the wildly popular bot is facing a reversal of fortune.
Analytics firm Similarweb has reported the first decline in ChatGPTs traffic. According to the company, worldwide desktop, and mobile traffic to the ChatGPT website declined by 9.7% in June from May, while unique visitors to the site dropped 5.7%. The time visitors spent on the website was also down by 8.5%.
That could mean that people are losing interest in the bot or experimenting with other chatbots with unique features and more accurate responses. Alternatively, competitors have been entering the market and stealing traffic. For example, Google launched its Bard chatbot in April, and Microsofts Bing search engine now offers an OpenAI-powered chatbot.
It’s also possible that the decrease in traffic results from some technical problems. The bot is powered by the same natural language processing model that drives Microsoft Bing, and it reportedly requires a lot of computing power to operate. That might explain why the bot’s speed and reliability are deteriorating.
One other possibility is that people are noticing more imperfections in the model. It is not uncommon for emerging AI models to struggle with specific tasks or produce inaccurate answers at times, and users may have started to notice that ChatGPT is not always up to par. This erodes trust and makes users more wary of the technology, which could lead them to seek out other models.
In any case, the slowdown in traffic is certainly a sign that the novelty of ChatGPT’s ability to generate real-time information has worn off. David Carr, senior manager of insights at Similarweb, and RBC Capital Markets analyst Rishi Jaluria agree that the traffic drop reflects this.
Whether or not the decline in traffic is a permanent trend remains to be seen, but it’s certainly a concerning trend. The team behind the bot is working to resolve any issues and keep its performance up-to-par, so hopefully, it will pick up again soon. If it doesn’t, this could be the first sign that the boom of AI-powered chatbots is starting to wane. But for now, we still have a long way to go before we get an accurate, reliable, generative AI that can truly revolutionize how we communicate online. And that’s a very, very big deal.
