Interest in OpenAI's ChatGPT skyrocketed earlier this year, but the chatbot's growth now appears to be waning.
Worldwide user traffic to ChatGPT’s website dropped 9.7% from May to June, according to traffic analytics provider Similarweb. When looking at traffic in the US, the month-over-month decline was slightly larger at 10.3%.
SimilarWeb added that unique visitors to the ChatGPT site also dropped 5.7% during the month. In addition, time spent on the site decreased by 8.5% from April to May.
User traffic also fell for other chatbot-related services. This includes Microsoft’s Bing search engine—which has integrated OpenAI’s ChatGPT tech—and another provider, Character.AI. Traffic to Google's Bard AI remained flat from month to month.
Has the public had enough of AI chatbots? "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,” SimilarWeb wrote in a blog post. “Chatbots will have to prove their worth, rather than taking it for granted, from here on out.”
The findings are good news for Google, which is trying to stop ChatGPT from destroying its traditional search engine model. Traffic to ChatGPT’s website already exceeds Microsoft’s Bing.com, but Google still holds a huge lead in search.
That said, OpenAI launched an iOS version of ChatGPT, so some traffic may be going through the app instead, which could have contributed to the decrease in SimilarWeb’s numbers.