OpenAI has released a first-of-its-kind research paper through the National Bureau of Economic Research, offering an unprecedented look at how people actually use ChatGPT, based on internal user data rather than self-reported surveys. The numbers are striking: ChatGPT now has over 700 million weekly active users (nearly 10% of the world's adult population), processing over 2.6 billion messages daily as of June 2025. However, usage growth among long-term users has plateaued, with recent gains driven almost entirely by new user acquisition. The user base skews heavily young, with 46% between ages 18–25, and has shifted from 80% male at launch to a slight female majority today.

The most surprising finding may be that 72% of ChatGPT usage is non-work related, a figure that has grown significantly over the past year. Among all conversations sampled, writing assistance dominates at 28%, rising to 42% for work-related tasks — though much of this involves editing and critiquing rather than generating text from scratch. Information seeking has surged to 24.4% of conversations, positioning ChatGPT increasingly as a search engine alternative despite ongoing confabulation concerns. Meanwhile, 14.9% of work-related conversations involve making decisions and solving problems, suggesting people are treating ChatGPT as an advisor rather than just a task executor. Notably, some hyped use cases remain relatively niche: computer programming accounts for just 4.2% of conversations, creative ideation 3.9%, and game/roleplay a mere 0.4%.