T#How are 700 million people using ChatGPT every week? OpenAI’s most comprehensive report has arrived
The first comprehensive ChatGPT user research report is here!
Just now, OpenAI and Harvard economist David Deming published a new paper——
The title is’ How People Use ChatGPT ‘, which provides a detailed discussion on the usage of ChatGPT from its launch in November 2022 to July 2025.
Why launch the report at this node, perhaps it is also related to the phased achievements of ChatGPT.
As of July this year, the weekly active users of ChatGPT have exceeded 700 million, and the total number of messages sent per week has reached 18 billion.
In the face of this huge user base and message volume, the paper aims to understand the core of * * 1.5 million * * large-scale conversations through analysis:
+What are people doing with ChatGPT?
+Who is using ChatGPT?
If you are also interested in these questions, why not continue reading——
##What do people do with ChatGPT?
For the first question, it is important to emphasize one point:
Unlike previous methods based on questionnaire surveys, this time the research team mainly relies on internal dialogue data, uses automated classifiers, and combines privacy protection methods to analyze the actual usage of ChatGPT, which can be said to be more scientific and reasonable.
The specific dataset can be divided into three categories:
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Growth Dataset: The total amount of messages and basic demographic statistics for all consumer plans (Free/Plus/Pro) from November 2022 to September 2025.
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Classification message sample: From May 2024 to June 2025, approximately 1.1 million de identified messages were randomly selected and labeled with LLM classifier for purpose, topic, and interaction type.
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Employment data: approximately 130000 users’ occupations and education (from publicly available sources), aggregated and analyzed through Clean Room data.
Based on the above data, the paper finds that ChatGPT is mainly used to complete daily tasks.
Three quarters of the conversation focuses on practical guidance, information search, and writing. Writing is the most common job task, while programming and self-expression remain niche activities.
The specific proportions of the three main types of usage are as follows:
+Practical guidance (28.8%): such as personalized fitness plans, creative ideas, skill teaching, etc;
+Information search (24.4%): Person/event information, recipes, product inquiries, etc;
+Writing (23.9%): email/document generation, text editing, translation, summarization, etc.
However, demands such as computer programming and socializing (such as interpersonal reflection, game role-playing, etc.) are relatively small.
In addition, people’s use of ChatGPT can also be divided into three categories: asking, doing, and expressing.
It was found that approximately half of the messages (49%) belonged to the “inquiry” category, which is the fastest-growing and highest rated category by users, indicating that people are more inclined to view ChatGPT as a consultant, providing advice and decision-making references, rather than simply completing tasks.
The “action” category accounts for 40%, of which about one-third is work-related, including drafting texts, planning, or programming.
The “expression” category accounts for 11%, mainly involving personal reflection, exploration, and entertainment, rather than clear problem seeking or specific tasks.
To summarize, currently ChatGPT mainly serves as a consultant and is most commonly used for practical guidance, information retrieval, and writing.
Important reminder: In order to protect user privacy during the research process, the core measures they have taken are as follows:
One is that when analyzing user messages, no one can directly view the original message content, but rather analyze the data after de identification and privacy information has been deleted through automated tools.
Secondly, the research team is unable to directly access detailed information at the individual level and will not aggregate data for groups of less than 100 users.
So the next question is——
##Who is using ChatGPT?
The core observation drawn from the paper regarding the user population is that the gender gap in ChatGPT has significantly narrowed.
In the early stages (late 2022-2023), approximately 80% of active users had typical male names, but this year, the proportion of users with typical female names has reversed:
Male names have decreased to 48%, with females slightly surpassing males, and the gender usage gap has been basically eliminated.
From an age distribution perspective, users aged 18-25 are the most frequent users of ChatGPT among adult users, contributing 46% of the message volume. And the older the age, the higher the proportion of work-related news.
In addition, from the perspective of the economic level of user distribution regions, ChatGPT has grown rapidly, especially in low - and middle-income countries.
As of May this year, the growth rate of ChatGPT usage in low-income countries is more than four times that of high-income countries.
In summary, based on user data, ChatGPT is still being further popularized.
For more details, please refer to the complete report.
Reference link:
[1] https://openai.com/index/how-people-are-using-chatgpt/
[2] https://x.com/dotey/status/1967580799844413915?s=46