In recent months, ChatGPT is the most talked about subject in technology. Interest in him, though, may have reached a ceiling. Monthly traffic data points to a drop in views, unique visitors, and time on page.
The information is from Similarweb, a service that monitors traffic on the internet. According to the company, from May to June 2023, the ChatGPT website had:
a 9.7% drop in worldwide desktop and smartphone traffic;
a 10.3% drop in U.S. desktop and computer traffic;
a 5.7% drop in the number of unique visitors;
8.5% drop in time spent by visitors.
There are a few possible explanations for this number, in addition to the loss of interest. OpenAI has released a ChatGPT app for iPhones and iPads, which doesn’t make it into Similarweb’s count — some of the traffic may have ended up there.
Also, June is school holiday month in the U.S., which can mean fewer students needing help with lessons and work.
Drop in usage can help OpenAI save money
The numbers may seem negative at first glance, but they could be good news for OpenAI.
It is estimated that the company spends $ 700,000 per day (about R $ 3.4 million, in direct conversion) to keep the artificial intelligence robot running. This type of task requires a lot of computational processing.
On the other hand, there are relatively few users who pay for the tool. ChatGPT’s Plus plan, which brings priority access and costs $20 a month, has 1.5 million subscribers. The robot has 100 million monthly active users.
Another source of OpenAI revenue is access to the ChatGPT API. At this point, things seem to be going well. Website traffic to developers was up 3.1% from May to June.
ChatGPT has grown fast and remains huge
Even with the drop, the use of ChatGPT is still huge. There are 1.5 billion monthly visits, which put it on the list of the 20 most accessed websites in the world.
The number of monthly visits, by the way, exceeds that of Microsoft’s Bing. The company is a major investor in OpenAI and has embarked artificial intelligence technologies on its search engine.
In addition, ChatGPT already had 100 million monthly active users as of January 2023, two months after launch, a number that made it the fastest-growing app in history.
A proof of the program’s impact also comes from Similarweb. According to the company, Stack Overflow saw a 14% drop in monthly traffic in March.
Stack Overflow is widely used by developers when it comes to solving questions about code. ChatGPT has the ability to solve issues of this type.
