I think it is not the "novelty wearing off", but rather people being disappointed with the decrease in quality. I have been paying for the GPT-4 version for months, but recently, I find myself using it less and less, as the usefulness of many answers is just not there any more. Keeping longer conversations also has become more frustrating (more forgetting/hallucinations). Haven't tried out the API yet, I now heard multiple times it's supposed to be better.
Over the past 30 days, the quality of chatGPT has dramatically dropped. I personally have started using the API exclusively as I don't see a quality drop.
Unlikely. At least 10% of ChatGPT's users are students, and 95% of students are on break right now. Just wait until September.
I suspect internet traffic generally drops seasonally in the US.