Stack Overflow's forum traffic plummets due to AI coding assistants, but AI licensing deals drive new revenue
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Summary
Stack Overflow, once the premier Q&A forum for developers, has seen a dramatic decline in traffic due to the rise of AI-powered coding assistants like ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude, and Copilot. Elon Musk described this as "death by LLM" in 2023. Despite the forum's decline, the company has ironically found a new revenue stream by licensing its data to AI companies, generating millions in revenue. The article explores how AI both killed Stack Overflow's original community-driven model and became its financial lifeline.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledWhen Elon Musk described Stack Overflow's plight as 'death by LLM' in July 2023, he wasn't exaggerating.
Having been the go-to resource for developers looking for technical help for a long time, Stack Overflow neared the peak of its powers during the pandemic.
But amid a wave of powerful code-writing AI assistants like ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude, Google's Gemini, and Microsoft's Copilot, traffic to the site has plummeted.
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