OpenAI's ChatGPT Shows a Significant Slowing in Traffic

🔥 Is the bull market of OpenAI and LLM hype crashing?

Hello Everyone,

This is just a short note.

Call it a summer lull or something bigger, ChatGPT adoption is slowing and decreasing fast in recent weeks and days.

ChatGPT app downloads are slowing down, BofA finds

It’s a very marked decrease for the Microsoft backed startup.

• Analysts found that app downloads for ChatGPT and Microsoft Bing have slowed in recent weeks, citing Sensor Tower data.

• ChatGPT downloads on iPhones in the U.S. were down 38% month over month in June, according to the note.

While Sam was on his world tour and lobbying the EU to have less harsh A.I. regulations, OpenAI’s ChatGPT was getting less traffic, a far cry from the viral adoption they had claimed in the first six months.

GPT-4 Did not Make Bing a Threat to Google

ChatGPT downloads on iPhones in the U.S. were down 38% month over month in June, according to the note. Bing app downloads, which includes a ChatGPT-based chatbot in the U.S., were also down 38% in June.

Google’s search engine market share is slightly up year over year at over 92%, according to the note, citing SimilarWeb data. Microsoft’s Bing, which uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology, was down 40 basis points on an annual basis to about 2.8% of the market.

This indicates that some of the “hype” around ChatGPT may be hushing as more companies ban it and more consumers are aware of the risks of using it.

The slowing attention for ChatGPT and similar large language models, or LLMs, highlights the investment risk for a stock market that has not been realistic in recent months about the nascent technology. Some are even calling it a bubble.

An A.I. stock rally worth hundreds of Billions of dollars might be at stake here. In a world stocked with so many chatbots, maybe nobody is a real winner, since the technology is not mature, safe or regulated yet.

When asked to pick just one AI large language model (LLM) to use, 49% chose ChatGPT vs. 26% for Bing and 21% for Bard. What happens when Gemini, Claude and Pi get good I wonder?

Bad sign for OpenAI and user-facing chat LLMs in general. It looks like the drawbacks of hallucinations and being overly fine-tuned to avoid any sensitive topics outweighed the benefits of huge time-saving. - Machine Learning Author, Andriy Burkov

Google Trends

Google trends shows a significant downward curve for ChatGPT searches globally.

Searches for ChatGPT in May, 2023 Dropped off a Cliff in the U.S.

Tidbits from BoFA Survey

So what’s going on? Google Search gets a surprising lift while interest in ChatGPT is leveling off. Penetration of ChatGPT among U.S. consumers is high and many are using it for search, which would explain why Bing actually lost marketshare in recent months.

Yet curiously in terms of daily usage, Bing and Bard are still more accessible. About 30% of respondents use Bing and Bard daily, vs. ChatGPT at 23%.

But all is not bad for ChatGPT and OpenAI: Asked which they would use if only allowed access to one of the three, 49% picked ChatGPT, followed by Bing at 26% and Bard at 21%. Two-thirds of respondents already have or plan to download ChatGPT on their mobile phones.

Granted though if ChatGPT adoption is already slowing, it could indicate that the technology may not seriously threaten Google’s dominance in search. ChatGPT and Bing competing with Google doesn’t seem very realistic for now given the latest data.

ChatGPT downloads are slowing (via BofA)

So there are some obvious possibilities here:

• Summer lull (seasonal for all internet traffic)

• Saturation in early-adopters has likely been reached

• ChatGPT just isn’t a viral technology at all

• What other conclusions could we draw?

Web Traffic is down for ChatGPT

Bank of America analysts estimate visits to ChatGPT were down about 11% on a monthly basis to just over 51 million visitors per week, or only about 2% of Google’s estimated web traffic.

Analytics firm Similarweb too reported a fall in monthly traffic to its website and decline in unique visitors for the first time ever in June on the ChatGPT website. The worldwide desktop and mobile traffic to the ChatGPT website decreased by 9.7% in June from May, while unique visitors to ChatGPT's website dropped 5.7%. The amount of time visitors spent on the website was also down 8.5%, Similarweb data shows.

The BoFA survey really comes at a weird time for OpenAI that thinks AGI and even ASI are right around the corner.

OpenAI is forming a new team led by Ilya Sutskever, its chief scientist and one of the company’s co-founders, to develop ways to steer and control “superintelligent” AI systems.