OpenAI Reveals How (and Which) Folks Are Utilizing ChatGPT

Massive language fashions largely stay black bins when it comes to what is occurring inside them to provide the outputs that they do. They’ve additionally been a little bit of a black field when it comes to who’s utilizing them and what they’re doing with them. OpenAI, with some assist from the Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis (NBER), set out to determine what precisely its rising person base is getting up to with its chatbot. It discovered a shocking quantity of non-public use and a closing “gender hole” amongst its frequent customers.

In an NBER working paper authored by the OpenAI Financial Analysis group and Harvard economist David Deming, the researchers discovered that about 80% of all ChatGPT utilization falls beneath one in all three classes: “Sensible Steerage,” “In search of Info,” and “Writing.” “Sensible steering,” which the examine discovered to be the most typical utilization, consists of issues like “tutoring and instructing, how-to recommendation about a wide range of subjects, and inventive ideation,” whereas “searching for info” is considered as an alternative to conventional search. “Writing” included the automated creation of emails, paperwork, and different communications, in addition to modifying and translating textual content.

Writing was additionally the most typical work-related use case, per the examine, accounting for 40% of work-related messages in June 2025, in comparison with simply 4.2% of messages associated to laptop programming—so it appears coding with ChatGPT is just not that widespread.

Notably, work utilization for ChatGPT seems to make up a shrinking share of how persons are interacting with the chatbot. In June 2024, about 47% of interactions customers had with the chatbot had been work-related. That has shrunk to simply 27%, which comes as other research exhibits corporations largely failing to determine how one can generate any form of significant return from their AI investments. In the meantime, non-work-related interactions have jumped from 53% to 73%.

Whereas customers are apparently spending extra time with ChatGPT of their private time, OpenAI’s analysis discovered {that a} “pretty small” share of messages with the chatbot had been customers searching for digital companionship or speaking about social-emotional points. The corporate claimed that about 2% of all messages had been folks utilizing ChatGPT as a therapist or good friend, and simply 0.4% of individuals talked to the chatbot about relationships and private reflections—although it’d be fascinating to see if customers who interact with a chatbot this fashion generate extra messages and if there may be stickier engagement.

For what it’s price, different researchers appear to imagine that this utilization is much extra widespread than these numbers may counsel. Frequent Sense Media, as an illustration, discovered that about one in three teens use AI chatbots for social interplay and relationships. One other study discovered that about half of all grownup customers have used a chatbot for “psychological help” within the final yr. The teenager determine is especially of word, contemplating OpenAI’s analysis did discover its userbase skews younger. The NEBR examine discovered 46% of the messages got here from customers recognized as being between the ages of 18 and 25 (it additionally excluded customers beneath the age of 18). These customers are additionally extra possible to make use of ChatGPT for private use, as work-related messages improve with age.

The examine additionally discovered that there’s a rising variety of girls utilizing ChatGPT, which initially had a really male-dominated person base. The corporate claims that the variety of “masculine first identify” customers has declined from about 80% in 2022 to 48% in June 2025, with “sometimes female names” rising to achieve parity.

One caveat in regards to the examine which will provide you with pause, relying on how a lot you belief know-how: OpenAI used AI to categorize all the messages it analyzed. So for those who’re skeptical, there’s an asterisk you may put subsequent to the figures.