ChatGPT web traffic drops for third straight month

Driving the news: Worldwide desktop and mobile website visits to the ChatGPT website decreased by 3.2% to 1.43 billion in August, per data by analytics firm Similarweb. That follows approximately 10% drops from each of the previous two months.

• There are signs the decline is coming to an end, Reuters reported.

What's happening: ChatGPT saw a big drop when school let out and use is expected to bounce back this fall.

• Here's another key point: ChatGPT was the only game in town for generative AI at the very start. Now that there's increasing chatbot competition, it's no surprise that growth could level off.

The big picture: The amount of time visitors spent on ChatGPT has been declining monthly since March, from an average of 8.7 minutes on-site to 7 minutes in August, according to Reuters.

• But August worldwide unique visitors ticked up to 180.5 million users from 180 million.
• U.S. ChatGPT traffic in August rose slightly — in concert with back-to-school.

Go deeper: How ChatGPT became the next big thing