A new study by OpenAI has revealed that nearly 70% of all ChatGPT conversations are unrelated to office work, showing the growing role of artificial intelligence in people’s daily lives.
The report, published as a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, was conducted by OpenAI’s Economic Research team in collaboration with Harvard economist David Deming. The researchers analyzed 1.5 million anonymized user conversations.
Findings from the study show that ChatGPT is more often used for everyday personal needs such as seeking practical guidance, getting writing assistance, and finding information, rather than workplace-related projects or programming tasks.
By July 2025, ChatGPT had grown to more than 700 million weekly active users who exchanged 2.5 billion messages daily—an average of 29,000 per second. Of these, only 30% were tied to professional use, while the majority focused on personal applications like drafting messages, refining personal writing, or receiving decision-making support.
Writing tasks remain the leading professional use of ChatGPT, accounting for 42% of work-related queries, particularly among managers and business professionals. For personal usage, three areas—practical guidance, writing, and information seeking—make up nearly 78% of all interactions.
The report also notes that two-thirds of writing-related messages involve editing or improving existing drafts, suggesting that users rely on ChatGPT as a collaborator rather than a generator of fresh content. Coding, at just 4.2%, and self-reflection, at 1.9%, represent niche areas of engagement.
The study highlights the widening adoption of AI across demographics and regions. While only 37% of early 2024 users had typically feminine names, that share rose to 52% by mid-2025. Similarly, adoption in low- and middle-income countries has accelerated at a pace four times faster than in wealthier regions.
Commenting on the findings, OpenAI said: “Consumer adoption has broadened beyond early-user groups, shrinking the gender gap in particular. Most conversations now focus on everyday tasks like seeking information and practical guidance, creating economic value through both personal and professional use.”
In August 2025, OpenAI marked a record 700 million weekly users with the launch of GPT-5, described as its most powerful and advanced model yet. The company said GPT-5 brings major improvements in reasoning, accuracy, and speed, and is already being adopted across industries.
