Illustration of the ChatGPT App on the iOS App Retailer displayed on a telephone display.
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Regardless of fast adoption of enormous language fashions like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, few complete research have delved into precisely how the expertise is being utilized in on a regular basis life — that’s, till now.
On Tuesday, researchers, together with these from OpenAI, launched a first-of-its-kind examine that examines who was utilizing ChatGPT and for what functions primarily based on inner messages despatched to ChatGPT on shopper plans.
Amongst the important thing findings from the Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis working paper was the surge in non-work associated messages, leaping to 73% in June 2025 from 53% a yr in the past.
In a publish on LinkedIn, OpenAI Chief Economist Aaron Chatterji mentioned that the shift was a sign that ChatGPT is changing into a part of many features of individuals’s lives.
“We’re nonetheless studying how individuals use AI within the wild, however this development offers us a glimpse into the place the worth is and the way it’s shifting,” he added.
The examine, which has not been formally scrutinized by different researchers, or peer reviewed, was authored by OpenAI’s Financial Analysis workforce and Harvard economist David Deming, and mentioned to have drawn on “a large-scale, privacy-preserving evaluation of 1.5 million conversations.”
Right here is an overview of a few of the most notable revelations:
What are the most typical use instances?
Whereas ChatGPT can theoretically be used for advanced work duties like coding, the examine discovered that shopper utilization of the chatbot has been largely about “getting on a regular basis duties performed,” OpenAI wrote in a weblog publish saying the examine.
Three-quarters of conversations with ChatGPT monitored by the researchers have been decided to have fallen into the three broad classes of “sensible steering, searching for data and writing.”
Sensible steering was discovered to be the most typical use case, with such makes use of encompassing requests for tutoring and educating, how-to recommendation and artistic ideation.
Nevertheless, use instances different relying on whether or not the chatbot was getting used within the office or for private profit. For instance, writing actions have been discovered to be the most typical use case at work, accounting for 40% of work-related messages on common in June.
In the meantime, slightly than simply utilizing ChatGPT to write down issues from scratch, about two-thirds of all writing messages requested the chatbot to carry out enhancing, critiquing and translating for current textual content.
The examine additionally checked out ChatGPT utilization patterns within the context of “Asking, Doing, and Expressing.”
As of July, about half of all messages fell into the “Asking” class, which researchers mentioned suggests that individuals worth ChatGPT most as an advisor slightly than just for process completion.
Nevertheless, for work-related messages, about 56% have been categorized as “Doing,” which implies the chatbot was used to carry out sure job duties, reminiscent of writing.
“Writing is a process that’s frequent to almost all white-collar jobs, and good written communication abilities are among the many high ‘delicate’ abilities demanded by employers,” the paper famous.
The affect that AI fashions could have on the office has been a scorching subject since ChatGPT was launched for customers in November 2022, with rising fears that the expertise might be used to switch staff.
Nevertheless, researchers argued their findings confirmed that, at the very least within the case of shopper ChatGPT, it was largely used to assist enhance judgment and productiveness of staff, slightly than exchange all their duties, particularly in knowledge-intensive jobs.
Who’s utilizing it?
The examine famous that as of July, ChatGPT’s consumer base had grown to 10% of the world’s grownup inhabitants.
In the meantime, the demographic breakdown of those ChatGPT customers had shifted, with the chatbot slowly changing into extra common throughout genders and nationwide borders.
For instance, information from January 2024 confirmed that 37% of customers had usually female names, amongst customers with names that may very well be learn as both masculine or female.
However as of mid-2025, that gender hole was discovered to have narrowed dramatically, with feminine adoption in line with the final grownup demographics.
ChatGPT has additionally develop into extra accessible globally, with particularly fast progress in low- and middle-income international locations.
This has resulted in ChatGPT adoption progress charges within the lowest-income international locations rising to over 4 instances that within the highest-income international locations as of Might 2025.
In addition to providing totally different paid tiers on its shopper platform, ChatGPT additionally affords an enterprise product for companies, API entry and a software program engineering agent known as Codex.
Whereas ChatGPT has skilled explosive progress in recent times, it is encountering rising competitors from rivals like Elon Musk’s XAI and Google’s Gemini.
Simply this week, Gemini took the highest spot amongst free apps on Apple’s App Retailer, leapfrogging ChatGPT, following the August launch of its “Nano Banana” picture editor mannequin.