Are you still using ChatGPT?

ChatGPT, which has set off an AI boom globally, seems to have entered a bottleneck period.

First, there is unfavorable data regarding ChatGPT's usage. In early June, a survey released by Morgan Stanley showed that only 19% of respondents said they had used ChatGPT before, and only 4% said they relied on ChatGPT. The survey indicated that the proportion was surprisingly low.

This survey was conducted in April this year and involved 2,000 people. However, in the face of a global population of 7.8 billion, this sample size is not large, and it also reduces its reference value to some extent.

Another data set with a broader base is worth noting: ChatGPT's growth has slowed significantly.

According to SimilarWeb, a website data analysis tool, the growth rate of ChatGPT's visits was astonishing in the early stages. The month-on-month growth rate was 131.6% in January, 62.5% in February, and 55.8% in March. It slowed significantly in April, with a month-on-month growth rate of 12.6%, and in May, this figure had become 2.8%.

As ChatGPT becomes more popular, the reference base becomes larger, and the slowdown in growth rate is a normal phenomenon. However, based on the current trend, the month-on-month growth rate in June may also be negative.

At the beginning of this year, ChatGPT, like a bolt from the blue, showed the world the power of generative AI and made the underlying GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer model) a huge success, triggering a wave of large model startups. It refreshed many figures. What was impressive was that it was the fastest-growing consumer-level application in history in terms of user growth. In just two months after its launch, ChatGPT's monthly active users had exceeded 100 million.

However, even the creators find it difficult to give a clear answer about its future development. Helen Toner, a member of the OpenAI board of directors, once said, "Even the people who created them don't know what they can and can't do. I expect it will take several years before we truly understand everything GPT-4 can and cannot do."

ChatGPT's current ceiling does not represent the ceiling of GPT, but as a product supported by the current powerful large language model, the direction of ChatGPT can also serve as a window for observing GPT applications. The reverie about AI continues. Nearly half a year has passed, and we are curious about the actual usage of ChatGPT. Has it been overestimated?

Does ChatGPT really have a lot of users?