There’s a lot of things people supposedly use AI for — vibe coding, looksmaxxing, trying to understand elephants — but what do people actually use it for?
OpenAI released a 64-page study this week with the National Bureau of Economic Research, per Entrepreneur. It detailed who’s using ChatGPT and what they’re using it for based on 1.5m+ messages the chatbot received from 130k users, the largest such study so far.
Here’s what it found
Who’s using ChatGPT has changed. While 80% of ChatGPT’s users were men at launch in 2022, that’s since declined to 48%. Users also skew younger, with nearly 50% of messages sent by people under 26.
In terms of what, ~80% of conversations fell under three categories:
Practical guidance: This was the most common use case. Users asked for tutoring or teaching help, how-to guides, or assistance coming up with creative ideas.
Seeking information: Essentially using ChatGPT for web search activities.
Writing: This included generating new text, but ~66% of writing requests asked the bot for help editing, summarizing, translating, or critiquing existing text. This was the most common use case among people using ChatGPT at work, accounting for 40% of work-related requests in June 2025.
Interestingly…
… people weren’t actually using ChatGPT much for coding or companionship.
Just 4.2% of ChatGPT messages were related to coding, while a scant 1.9% of messages were related to relationships or personal reflection.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that people aren’t using AI for those purposes. It could just indicate that people are using tools other than ChatGPT.
And while one survey found that 72% of US teens said they have used AI for companionship, there are other — often controversial — platforms for that specific purpose.
All things considered, perhaps it’s nice that most people are being boring with AI. Maybe just don’t ask it for a recipe.