After running wildly for more than half a year, this AI fever triggered by ChatGPT seems to be slowly receding.
According to data from website traffic monitoring service Similarweb, ChatGPT visits have grown by 131.6% month-on-month in January and have declined month by month since then. By May, that figure had fallen to 2.8%, and negative month-on-month growth is expected in June. At the same time, the mainstream artificial intelligence chatbot websites on the market, traffic and the number of subscribers have stagnated or even declined.
Diandian data shows that ChatGPT's ranking in the United States, the main source of revenue, has also slipped since its mobile launch in May.
ChatGPT's ranking trend in the US region
In this context, there is an AI application tool called "Goblin Tools" that is low-key "popular". Diandian data shows that since its launch in May, Goblin Tools has been downloaded more than 10W on global dual platforms, and its estimated revenue has exceeded 21,000 US dollars. It is worth mentioning that the app has ranked among the top ten paid lists in more than 150 countries and regions around the world.
Goblin Tools is ranked in the Google Play paid charts
Goblin Tools is ranked in the App Store paid list
In the U.S. market, where its main source of revenue downloads comes from, Goblin Tools can even compete with U.S. pay-list "long-stayers" such as Minecraft, Shadowrocket, HotSchedules, Geometry Dash, and Heads Up!.
App Store ranking trends
Google Play ranking trends
App Store Paid Ranking (June 27 – July 6)
In fact, the vast majority of LLM (Large Language Model) AI applications currently on the market are not suitable for user interaction. For example, ChatGPT, in addition to technicians who need to work, most users will fall into the embarrassing situation of having nothing to talk about when facing a chat dialog that is simplified to the extreme, even if there are a massive and rich kernel behind the program; Not to mention that most people don't want to "talk" to computers with text, which is the main reason why ChatGPT traffic plummeted after the "novelty" faded.
According to a survey conducted by Morgan Stanley in April, the use of AI chatbots is much lower than everyone thinks. It surveyed 2,000 people and found that only 19 percent of respondents had used a ChatGPT chatbot, while Google's Bard chatbot had an even lower rate of 9 percent. And the vast majority of respondents who have never used chatbots said they are unlikely to use such tools in the next six months.
Although there is no shortage of products such as "Chat with Ask AI" that achieve user "ice-breaking" by actively bringing up topics, and break through in the ChatGPT traffic siege. However, the "conversation" logic of the app and ChatGPT "in the same vein" made it also fall into the dilemma of traffic decline under the tide of AI "fever".
In this context, also based on the ChatGPT model, why is Goblin Tools growing against the trend?
Goblin Tools is the app version of the free website goblin.tools designed to help neurodiverse people complete tasks they find unbearable or difficult.
Neurodiversity refers to changes in the human brain in terms of social behavior, learning ability, attention, mood, and other mental functions, and is autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), specific learning disabilities (SpLDs, including dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysscalculia, and dysgraphia). dysgraphia) and Tourette Syndrome. It should be noted that neurodiversity is not necessarily pathological, but the design of social structures and institutions makes neurodiverse people face greater difficulties in life.
Different from the "big and complete" ChatGPT, "Goblin Tools" focuses on vertical segmentation, takes user needs as the core, and creates a "small but beautiful" practical tool for neurodiverse people. Through the AI (ChatGPT) underlying driver, Goblin Tools implements functional services such as Magic ToDo, Text Tone Adjustment (Formalizer), Tone Sentiment Judgment (Judge), Task Duration Estimation (Estimator), Idea Compiler and Chef (Chef).
In addition, unlike the cookie-cutter "AI chatbot" on the market, the biggest difference in Goblin Tools is that the design of the button function greatly reduces the cost of users. Users don't need to put a lot of effort into getting the AI output.
In the case of Magic ToDo, users simply enter to-do items and Goblin Tools can automatically break them down into subtasks. The number of subtask decomposition depends on the user's adjustment of "spiciness", "spicy" represents the user's anxiety about the matter, divided into 5 levels, the higher the anxiety level, the more detailed the task decomposition steps. For the decomposed subtasks, users can also re-decompose, add, delete or mark according to their own needs.
However, ChatGPT requires users to constantly correct "Prompt" (AI prompts, a method that uses natural language to guide or motivate artificial intelligence models to complete specific tasks) through "chat", and it is not as concise and organized as Goblin Tools.
According to developer Bram De Buyser, the free website goblin.tools received 330,000 visits in May, of which Magic ToDo is the most frequently used tool by users, 3 times higher than Formalizer calls and 6 times more calls than other tools.
Formalizer can convert the text or voice entered by the user (currently only the website side supports voice input) into the expression the user wants, including more professional, more formal, more relaxed and casual, more enthusiastic, more ironic, more objective and other 10 conversion category choices, which also supports "spicy" selection. Judge helps users understand the meaning of the input based on the text or dialogue entered.
Estimator, as its name suggests, helps the user estimate the time it will take to complete the task based on the "spiciness" chosen by the user, so that things can be better organized. Compiler can turn the ideas in the user's head into a task list to help them perform better. Chef automatically generates recipes and cooking processes based on the ingredients, portions, cooking equipment, dietary restrictions, and other content that the user inputs.
The highly superimposed user scenario experience in vertically segmented fields not only retained the first batch of loyal users for Goblin Tools, but also formed word-of-mouth fermentation and achieved a breakthrough in the downward trend of AI applications.
According to rough statistics, on the TikTok platform, the number of views of "Goblin Tools" related videos has exceeded 3 million, and judging from the comments, the vast majority of people have a good evaluation of the app.
There is no shortage of users who have expressed their desire to donate/sponsor goblin.tools to support its continued operations. In response, developer Bram De Buyser responded that goblin.tools will remain free (no ads or paywalls), and Goblin Tools provides paid downloads at a low price of $0.99 to support the tool's mobile and web-based operation and maintenance costs to keep the site completely free.
Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, predicted: "In the future, there will be an intermediate layer between the basic model and the development of specific AI applications: a group of startups dedicated to adapting large models to the needs of specific AI applications." Startups that do this well will be very successful, but it depends on their ability to "data flywheel" (the three links of data production, data application, and data consumption, and achieve a reciprocal rotation between the three through a series of data tools. How far to go. ”
The emergence of "Goblin Tools" undoubtedly opens up the imagination of "AI applications", allows the public to see the potential and possibility of creating value in the middle layer, and also makes us have more expectations for the popularization and commercialization of AI in subdivided fields.