Since its debut in November 2022, ChatGPT has revolutionized the way individuals draft emails, oversee their social media profiles, and create code. A recent report from OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, provides new insights into the actual usage of this chatbot.

Researchers at OpenAI released a comprehensive 64-page study on Monday in collaboration with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The findings revealed that almost 80% of all interactions with ChatGPT revolved around three main themes: practical guidance, information seeking, and writing assistance. This study, which analyzed over 1.5 million messages sent to ChatGPT from May 2024 to July 2025 by 130,000 users, marks the most extensive research of its kind so far.

Here’s what it found:

What Are ChatGPT’s Demographics?

ChatGPT’s demographics have changed in the years since its launch.

The proportion of male users has decreased from 80% in the initial months following the chatbot’s launch in late 2022 to 48% as of June 2025, indicating that the majority of the user base is now primarily female.

Additionally, nearly half of all messages sent to the chatbot since its inception have been from users under the age of 26. The Gen Z demographic is widely adopting AI, as demonstrated by a recent survey conducted by the International Workplace Group, which showed that approximately two-thirds of Gen Z participants were educating their older colleagues on AI usage.

OpenAI also announced on Tuesday that it was creating a different version of ChatGPT for teen users under the age of 18 that prioritized teen safety.

How Are People Using ChatGPT?

The leading use case was “practical guidance,” a category that includes tasks such as tutoring, instructional advice, and brainstorming creative concepts.

The second most frequent category was “seeking information,” which involves looking up details about individuals, products, and current happenings, similar to conducting an online search.

The final popular use case included writing tasks that automatically generate emails and documents, and editing text. Writing was the most common use case at work, with an average of 40% of work-related messages on ChatGPT stemming from writing queries. Most requests asked ChatGPT to look at text the user had already written instead of creating something new. In other words, two-thirds of writing messages asked ChatGPT to edit, translate, critique, or modify text instead of generating new text.

“Writing dominates work-related tasks, highlighting chatbots’ unique ability to generate digital outputs compared to traditional search engines,” the study read.

The study also classified messages another way, using three categories based on the kind of output the user was looking for: Asking, Doing, or Expressing.

“Asking” applies to nearly half of all messages sent to the chatbot (49%), which occurs when a user seeks information about a subject or a solution to a problem. “Doing” refers to tasks where a user wants an output, especially writing activities, and applies to 40% of all messages. “Expressing,” which refers to 11% of all messages, happens when a user communicates their views or feelings without asking for any information or action.

Based on these classifications, users were more likely to use ChatGPT to find answers to questions rather than to carry out tasks or express opinions. ChatGPT users tapping into the chatbot at work were most likely to use it to seek information and find information.

“Overall, we find that information-seeking and decision support are the most common ChatGPT use cases in most jobs,” the study reads.

Despite discussion from tech leaders like Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, it seems like vibe coding is still niche. The study found that comparatively few users were tapping into ChatGPT to code; only 4.2% of messages were related to computer programming, much less than 33% of all work-related conversations with competing chatbot Claude from Anthropic.

Also, only a small percentage of users were using ChatGPT for companionship or guidance on social issues. Less than 2% of ChatGPT messages were about relationships and personal reflection, per the study.