It was the tool of the year in 2022. Group chats everywhere were testing out the latest artificial intelligence (AI) function ChatGPT. But, like everything, as the novelty wears off, ChatGPT web traffic is posting a loss.

According to data released by web analytics company Similarweb, worldwide traffic to ChatGPT web has decreased nearly ten percent in one month.

Does a decrease in ChatGPT web traffic mean the end?

For ChatGPT, a ten percent decrease in online traffic isn’t too worrying, as it was the talk of the town when first released to market. And, as such, it was natural for the numbers to decrease after such a dizzyingly high first few months. 

ChatGPT, first released to the public in November 2022, saw a huge boost in the first quarter of 2023. The website continued to grow as people became curious about the new technology. How could it increase their work outputs? How can it be used day-to-day? So, only naturally, OpenAI and particularly ChatGPT saw an influx of traffic as word of mouth spread the site. 

But for June, the site posted its first month of traffic loss. To put some perspective into it, however, the increases are keeping ChatGPT’s website still garnering well over 1.5 billion monthly visitors. 

The cost of running ChatGPT

For the parent company, OpenAI, this dip in traffic could be a good thing. The tool is a cost-free demo to try and get more paying customers for OpenAI. Due to the massive volume of traffic to the site, it can cost OpenAI a “eye-watering amount” according to Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman. In fact, it’s rumoured to cost about $700,000USD per day.

Still, the drop in interest for ChatGPT is a sign that the novelty is wearing off. Whether this means that the technology is soon to be defunct is open-ended.