OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has released a new report that offers a glimpse into how Americans are using the company’s large language models models. It might not be quite what investors would expect.
According to the AI giant, around “10% of the world’s adult population” has adopted its consumer chatbot since its Nov. 2022 launch. Usage has also become much more representative of the U.S. population after originally skewing male.
The ‘mainstreaming’ of the AI chatbot has seen rapid growth in non-work-related messages, which have seen “faster growth” and grown to account for 70% of all usage.
There’s some unanimity in terms of what users ask ChatGPT, too. Per the company’s working paper, nearly 80% of all conversations revolve around three topics: Practical Guidance (28.3%), Writing (28.1%), and Seeking Information (21.3%).
NBER / ChatGPT
As a percent of usage, asking about specific info (18.3%), editing or critiquing provided text (10.6%), and tutoring or teaching (10.2%) are the three most common specific use cases within those larger categories.
The disparity between non-work and work-related questions might perplex some. However, it should be taken with a grain of salt: the new report only looks at the consumer version of ChatGPT, missing out on some of the enterprise uses or private instances.
Still, the findings might give investors and AI industry participants pause, as usage reveals the company’s biggest use cases. As work-related inquiries represent about 30% of ChatGPT’s usage, it remains to be seen how the company will emphasize consumer-focused features, which will be necessary to pay for the lofty cost of running the chatbot.
And representing less than 10% of the model’s usage, work-related tasks like computer programming (4.2%) and data analysis (0.4%) barely make a dent in the usage. That could be a sign that coders are using more purpose-built solutions, operating in local environments, or using other models like Anthropic’s Claude Code or Google’s (GOOGL) Gemini.
OpenAI’s latest report comes as competitor Anthropic spun up a dashboard which offers visibility into what jobs and U.S. states are using its model, Claude.
Related: Claude creator Anthropic reveals what jobs are most likely to use AI
In that report, Claude found that technical jobs were the most common users of its models, including software developers and programmers.
OpenAI is the AI industry’s most-valuable private startup, valued at $300 billion in its latest fundraise. The company is in the process of converting itself from a nonprofit to a for-profit company, a condition of procuring billions in funding to continue its operations and inch closer to all-purpose AI models.