NEW ORLEANS – OpenAI has released a sweeping study on how people use ChatGPT, offering one of the clearest pictures yet of the technology’s role in everyday life. Conducted in collaboration with researchers from Duke and Harvard Universities, the study, which was released on Sept. 15, examined usage patterns between May 2024 and June 2025.
Henry Hays, CEO and co-founder of DisruptREADY, a local business intelligence firm, said the report offered rare insight into user behavior. “OpenAI has popped the hood to tell people what users care about and what they’re asking,” Hays said.
A Rapidly Growing User Base
The numbers illustrate the scale of adoption. By July of this year, the study estimated that ChatGPT had about 700 million weekly active users worldwide. Those users were generating 18 billion messages per week, or roughly 2.6 billion per day. Researchers noted that this reach amounts to nearly 10 percent of the global adult population, a striking figure for a product less than three years old.
“We’ve never seen growth like this, ever, in the history of tech. It’s the fastest by far,” said Hays.
From Work to Daily Life
The research also found that ChatGPT is increasingly being used outside the workplace. In June 2024, slightly more than half of messages were non-work related, but by June 2025 that share had grown to nearly three-quarters. The authors suggested that this shift shows how quickly the technology has embedded itself into daily routines as well as professional settings.
How People Use ChatGPT
Three types of activity dominated overall: practical guidance (29 percent), seeking information (24 percent), and writing (24 percent). Together, these accounted for about 80 percent of all conversations. Within the practical guidance group, about one in ten requests involved teaching or tutoring.
“Now with ChatGPT and the other LLMs (Large Language Models), what if you could have a personal tutor that knew your learning style, knew your goal, and knew when you wanted to achieve that goal? Ten percent of the searchers are already people seeking their own way to do that. What a brilliant business opportunity!” said Hays.
Writing, which includes everything from drafting emails to generating longer-form documents, was particularly concentrated in work-related use. The report also noted that while programming tasks tend to draw media attention, they represented only about 4.2 percent of ChatGPT messages. Conversations related to companionship or personal reflection made up just a small fraction, in the range of two to three percent.
Who Is Using It?
The demographic breakdowns added further nuance. Early adopters were disproportionately male, but the gender gap has narrowed as use expanded globally. Growth has been especially strong in lower-income countries, a pattern the researchers interpreted as evidence of the technology’s broad accessibility and relevance.
Economic Implications
The study also pointed to broader economic implications. Rather than functioning primarily as a replacement for labor, the authors found that ChatGPT’s most immediate value lies in decision support—helping people sift through information, frame problems, and produce outputs more efficiently. This applies equally in personal and professional contexts, from researching a household purchase to preparing a business report.
Such findings suggest that demand for decision-support tools will only rise as adoption grows. “We all know these numbers are going to grow,” said Hays.
How the Study Was Conducted
To reach these conclusions, the researchers relied on an automated system that categorized messages without human review, a design intended to protect privacy and ensure consistency in classification. The system determined whether a message was work-related and assigned it to topical categories. The dataset excluded under-18 users, people who were logged out, and anyone who had opted out of contributing their data. All personal identifiers were removed before the analysis was conducted.
The study was released as a working paper through the National Bureau of Economic Research, a leading nonprofit in economics and policy. Such papers are preliminary studies circulated before peer review, allowing findings to be discussed and refined which is a common practice.
Looking Ahead
Taken together, the report portrays ChatGPT less as a niche coding tool and more as a broadly adopted assistant woven into both work and home life. Its role, the authors concluded, is increasingly to augment human decision-making rather than to serve as a replacement for it.
Hays said the findings point to a practical takeaway for businesses and individuals. “The bottom line is that it’s time to get specific about what you want this technology to do for you. It’s time to get selfish with the output because it’s all available,” he said.
