Skip to main content

ChatGPT website traffic has fallen for the first time

Since the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November, the clever AI-powered chatbot has taken the world by storm as people take the tool for a spin while also speculating about how the technology might transform the workplace and wider society.

But for the first time since ChatGPT landed toward the end of last year, visits to the chatbot’s website have dipped, analytics firm Similarweb said.

Recommended Videos

According to its findings, global traffic to OpenAI’s site for ChatGPT fell by 9.7% in June, while the rate of unique visitors dropped by 5.7%. Also, the amount of time visitors spent on the website was down 8.5%.

Traffic to the website began to level out in May, according to Similarweb’s analysis, so June’s findings may come as little surprise to those closely following the chatbot’s roller-coaster ride.

The analytics firm noted, however, that the site for ChatGPT still attracts more visitors than bing.com, Microsoft’s search engine, and Character.AI, the second most popular standalone AI chatbot site, adding that global visits to Character.AI also fell by 32% month-over-month.

Similarweb suggests the dip in traffic “is a sign that the novelty has worn off for AI chat,” but in truth, such a conclusion is not so easy to draw.

For example, the measures relate only to the website for ChatGPT — chat.openai.com — and not its more recent mobile apps, which at least some people will be using instead of heading to the website. Also, Microsoft, which is investing huge sums of money in OpenAI, has incorporated elements of the chatbot into its Bing search engine, giving people another reason to bypass the website.

Additionally, ChatGPT’s arrival has brought a huge amount of attention to generative AI and similar tools that include not only text-based offerings but also new image- and video-generation software. In other words, as people learn more about the technology, they could be heading to other AI tools to try those out, too.

Considering all this, it’s hardly straightforward to say that interest is waning in ChatGPT, though of course there may be cases where some folks have had a brief go and left it at that — for now at least.

Want to find out more about ChatGPT? Digital Trends has you covered.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
It’s not your imagination — ChatGPT models actually do hallucinate more now
Deep Research option for ChatGPT.

OpenAI released a paper last week detailing various internal tests and findings about its o3 and o4-mini models. The main differences between these newer models and the first versions of ChatGPT we saw in 2023 are their advanced reasoning and multimodal capabilities. o3 and o4-mini can generate images, search the web, automate tasks, remember old conversations, and solve complex problems. However, it seems these improvements have also brought unexpected side effects.

What do the tests say?

Read more
ChatGPT’s awesome Deep Research gets a light version and goes free for all
Deep Research option for ChatGPT.

There’s a lot of AI hype floating around, and it seems every brand wants to cram it into their products. But there are a few remarkably useful tools, as well, though they are pretty expensive. ChatGPT’s Deep Research is one such feature, and it seems OpenAI is finally feeling a bit generous about it. 

The company has created a lightweight version of Deep Research that is powered by its new o4-mini language model. OpenAI says this variant is “more cost-efficient while preserving high quality.” More importantly, it is available to use for free without any subscription caveat. 

Read more
The original AI model behind ChatGPT will live on in your favorite apps
OpenAI press image

OpenAI has released its GPT‑3.5 Turbo API to developers as of Monday, bringing back to life the base model that powered the ChatGPT chatbot that took the world by storm in 2022. It will now be available for use in several well-known apps and services. The AI brand has indicated that the model comes with several optimizations and will be cheaper for developers to build upon, making the model a more efficient option for features on popular applications, including Snapchat and Instacart. 

Apps supporting GPT‑3.5 Turbo API

Read more