Data shows that ChatGPT traffic began to pick up at the end of August, mainly because of the start of school.

According to the latest estimates from a third-party company, traffic of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT has risen again after declining throughout the summer, which may be directly related to the curriculum schedule of American schools.According to data from data intelligence company SimilarWeb, ChatGPT’s desktop and mobile traffic in the United States increased by about 12% last week compared with the previous week. YipitData, another data analysis company, said that ChatGPT’s daily traffic reached its lowest point in August this year, and then began to pick up at the end of the month.

However, it is estimated that the current traffic of ChatGPT is still far below the peak this spring.

ChatGPT's recent peak traffic occurred as schools in the United States began to reopen, which may have caused renewed attention to the extent of ChatGPT's use among students. Students can use this artificial intelligence tool to generate code and summarize notes in seconds, and can also be used to write term papers and other assignments. This also raises concerns about how many of ChatGPT users are students, as their commercial value to OpenAI is unreliable.

According to YipitData’s latest report, “According to our analysis, students’ return to school appears to be a major factor in the rebound in ChatGPT traffic, but it is not the only driving factor.” The reason why YipitData determined that some ChatGPT users are students is mainly because they often visit education-related domain names. The company saw a 21% increase in traffic to ChatGPT from student groups, while traffic to ChatGPT from non-student users increased by 8%. SimilarWeb emphasized that the back-to-school effect of students may be the main reason for the surge in ChatGPT usage.

A third analytics company, SensorTower, also said that in the last two weeks of August this year, when most U.S. students returned to school, the number of weekly active users of ChatGPT globally increased by more than 10%. The company noted that this growth was partly due to an increase in the number of active users in the Indian and Brazilian markets.

OpenAI declined to comment.

A report issued by UBS cited data from SimilarWeb and stated that since its launch in November last year, the number of ChatGPT users has exceeded 100 million in just two months. However, after several months of rapid growth, ChatGPT usage began to decline. According to data from SimilarWeb, ChatGPT’s traffic in the United States fell by 10% in May, 15% in June, and another 4% in July.

The rise of ChatGPT has forced schools to rethink the technology, with some choosing to ban its use entirely, while others are trying to incorporate it into the curriculum to help students learn. While some schools are beginning to roll out the new guidelines across the board, many are choosing to let teachers decide how students use AI tools in the classroom.