Well, here’s a surprise. Despite us being told that AI is going to take over the world, it turns out that ChatGPT, the famed, but limited, AI language model we've all been buzzing about, is suffering from a bit of a traffic jam.

According to the analysts over at Similarweb, the numbers don't lie. This August, ChatGPT's website witnessed a third consecutive month of falling monthly visitors. It seems there’s a little turbulence in the air for the previously high flying AI. By all accounts, worldwide desktop and mobile visits to the site took a dip of 3.2%, dwindling to a mere 1.43 billion visitors in August. Did you detect the sarcasm there?

What's more, before they published their findings, their social followers appeared confident that June and July's slump would continue:

Before we publish the data, what's your prediction for ChatGPT's August traffic?

— Similarweb (@Similarweb) September 4, 2023

Numbers Visiting, Time Spent Both Down

That’s not all. It’s not only the number of visitors the site’s receiving that’s taken a nose-dive, the time people are spending on the site has also dipped. Visitors used to spend an average of 8.7 minutes on the site, that’s now down to 7. Just imagine what they’re doing with that extra 1.7 minutes.

However, the number of unique visitors in August did grow, to 180.5 million users from 180 million. Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated, it seems.

In any case, don’t celebrate too soon, you Luddites. The kids are back to school in September, so we’re seeing an uptick. There’s bound to be an increase in usage as the little darlings seek “help” with their homework and assignments. As David F. Carr of Similarweb says, "Students seeking homework help appears to be part of the story: the percentage of younger users of the website dropped over the summer and is now starting to bounce back."

Why the Dip?

Aside from the kids being off school, the famed platform is facing competition, which might well account for some of the drop off. The new kids in town include Google's Bard chatbot and Microsoft's Bing, which has a chatbot powered by none other than OpenAI itself, perhaps the AIs are eating themselves. In addition, ChatGPT dived into iOS this May, with its very own app. Adding in the app might have siphoned off traffic from its website.

In any case, OpenAI offers access to their AI models to developers and enterprises for a fee. Plus, they've got a partnership with Microsoft, the developers of Bing, that's worth over $10 billion. So, we’re sure that the boffins behind ChatGPT aren’t all that worried.

What is for sure is that the text/chatbot side of AI is changing, as is how we’re using it. The debate on its impact seems never to stop. Where it and we will land is anyone’s guess.