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ChatGPT is losing users for the first time ever, and those users aren’t who you would expect. Traffic to ChatGPT’s website fell by 9.7% in June, according to estimates from Similarweb, a web analytics firm. The decline was steeper in the U.S., with a 10.3% month-on-month decline, and the number of unique visitors to ChatGPT also fell by 5.7% from the previous month.
One thing is clear to Francois Chollet, a software engineer and AI researcher at Google, who told Fortune over email that “one thing is sure: it’s not booming anymore.”
Chollet thinks he knows what’s going on: summer vacation. Instead of using ChatGPT for education-related activities, the engineer said on Twitter, kids are probably playing Minecraft or enjoying summer activities. Search interest over time for ChatGPT has steadily declined, while search interest for Minecraft has steadily increased, he pointed out.
There’s only one explanation: a significant portion of students using ChatGPT to do their homework. It’s one of the most common uses for ChatGPT, according to Sam Gilbert, a data scientist and author. He found queries for things like “ChatGPT essay,” “ChatGPT math,” and “ChatGPT history” are the second most prominent type of Google Search, aside from job application-related searches.
I find that homework is actually the #2 application of ChatGPT (as measured by US Google search).
There is a higher volume of searches relating to job applications (eg “chatgpt resume”, “chatgpt cover letter”), & a comparable volume for code (per https://t.co/vNSb0q30wG) https://t.co/Xu0dUnxWtQ pic.twitter.com/FcXqCkaci3
— Sam Gilbert (@samgilb) June 27, 2023
And now with summer break, that portion isn’t using ChatGPT for English or algebra homework. Not only do Google Trends show the downturn, but ChatGPT traffic estimates also show it.
In some ways, this recalls a bygone age of television, pre-Netflix, when the “big three” or “big four” networks would stop airing new episodes as school let out, and the summer was a time of vacations and no new programming, or reruns. The rise of quality in cable television challenged this at the turn of the millennium, and then cord-cutting completely severed the traditional television calendar. So, has the internet replaced television to become, in a paraphrase of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, the medium and the message? Well, maybe, but Chollet rejects any comparison to television here.
“Internet usage isn’t seasonal,” Chollet told Fortune over email. But ChatGPT usage is starting to look like it might be. There typically tends to be less professional app usage in summer, he said, as apps for work or school trend down in the summer or on weekends, but then apps related to leisure trend up during those times. That downtrend only happens for fully mature apps — otherwise, the adoption ramp-up of an app overrides any seasonal trends, Chollet told Fortune over email.
The way Chollet sees it, seasonality trends don’t affect booms. After all, he notes, internet adoption or early iPhone adoption didn’t pause because of seasonality. “Hell, even Facebook adoption (an app for college students!) didn’t pause because of summer break.”
While Google Search trends for Minecraft picking up aren’t the strongest indicator that the ChatGPT boom is done, Chollet said if ChatGPT is slowing down because of the season, that might mean it wasn’t experiencing a boom in the first place.
“All in all, this suggests that ChatGPT adoption is now stagnating,” Chollet told Fortune over email.
OpenAI did not respond to Fortune‘s request for comment.
