What 1.1 million messages say about how ChatGPT is actually used

By Steve Goldstein

ChatGPT is becoming more of a personal than a work tool, research finds.

ChatGPT use is growing fast, but it's becoming a less a tool in the workplace and more for personal use.

The conclusion comes from a new study written by OpenAI employees and researchers at Duke University and Harvard University that uses OpenAI proprietary data on its wildly popular ChatGPT artificial-intelligence chatbot.

The working paper, circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research, finds that daily message counts jumped from 451 million in June 2024 to 2.63 billion in June 2025. But the percentage of work messages fell from 47% to 27%.

They find the decreasing work share is mostly due to changing usage rather than a change in the composition of ChatGPT users.

Nearly 80% of ChatGPT use falls in three broad categories: practical guidance, seeking information and writing.

Seeking information - the task most clearly a substitute for the search function that Google (GOOGL) dominates - represents a fifth of the use.

One difference they point out from other studies is the relatively low use for computing coding. Only 4% of ChatGPT messages are used for that purpose, versus a different study of the rival Claude large language model that found a third for that purpose.

Their study also finds a lower use for therapy and companionship than another study on generative AI.

The gender gap in usage is entirely eliminated - from an estimated 80% with masculine first names, that was 48% by June 2025.

Usage still skews younger, but not by as much, and ChatGPT usage has grown faster in low- and middle-income countries over the last year, the searchers find

At work, people use ChatGPT the same throughout function and occupation - obtaining, documenting, and interpreting information; and making decisions, giving advice, solving problems, and thinking creatively. The authors say AI is being used more as co-pilot than a co-worker, providing decision support.

-Steve Goldstein

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09-16-25 0602ET