According to analytics company Similarweb, ChatGPT, the enormously well-liked AI chatbot introduced in November, experienced a fall in monthly website traffic and unique visitors for the first time ever in June.

Global desktop and mobile traffic to the ChatGPT website fell by 9.7% in June compared to May, while the number of unique visitors fell by 5.7%. The data also reveals an 8.5% decrease in the average time spent on the website by visitors.

While RBC Capital Markets analyst Rishi Jaluria explained the data signals to greater demand for generative AI with real-time information, Similarweb’s Senior Insights Manager David Carr noted that decreasing traffic is an indication that the novelty of the chatbot is wearing off.

There were no comments on the issue available from OpenAI.

Two months after its launch, ChatGPT sparked a frenzy in the usage of generative AI for routine tasks ranging from writing to coding and reached 100 million monthly active users.

It is one of the top 20 websites in the world with over 1.5 billion monthly visits, making it the fastest-growing consumer application ever.

For instance, ChatGPT has significantly outperformed Bing, the Microsoft-operated search engine that makes use of OpenAI technologies.

Several ChatGPT rivals have been released recently, including Google’s Bard chatbot. Users can access a free chatbot powered by OpenAI on Microsoft’s Bing search engine.\

“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.

In May, OpenAI also made the ChatGPT iOS app available, which would have reduced visits to its website. Some people link the shift in usage to the summer break from school, when fewer pupils seek assistance with their homework.

As of July 4, data.ai said that the chatbot had been downloaded on iOS in more than 17 million different countries.

According to the analytics company, downloads peaked on May 31 and have since maintained their popularity in the United States, averaging 530,000 downloads per week in the first six complete weeks of their availability.

The current slowdown in growth may help manage operating costs for ChatGPT, which uses a lot of processing capacity to respond to requests. The cost of maintaining the services has been called “eye-watering” by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

Users of ChatGPT can use GPT-4, OpenAI’s more sophisticated model, by subscribing to a premium service for $20 per month. In the United States, 1.5 million users have subscribed, according to the most recent figures from YipitData.

This year, OpenAI expects to earn $200 million in income. In addition to ChatGPT, it generates revenue by directly charging developers and businesses for access to its AI models via an API and through a collaboration with Microsoft, which gave the business over $10 billion.

(Adapted from MoneyControl.com)