Study shows ChatGPT widely used beyond work, more female users

OpenAI released a large-scale analysis this month showing that ChatGPT has shifted from an early-adopter technology into a widely used daily assistant, with women now making up a larger share of users and nonwork usage outpacing work-related queries. The company said the findings are based on an automated analysis of 1.5 million conversations sampled from its roughly 700 million users, reflecting activity as of mid-2025 and covering consumer plans of the service.

OpenAI’s Economic Research team and Harvard economist David Deming analyzed logged-in conversations from users over 18, excluding those who opted out of data collection or requested their data not be used for training. The company said privacy-preserving techniques were used and researchers did not review individual chat logs. The dataset covered consumer tiers and did not include enterprise, teams, or education plans. OpenAI reported that the platform now handles about 18 billion messages per week and that three broad categories practical guidance, writing, and information-seeking represent roughly 78 percent of all chats.

The study found that more than 70 percent of June conversations were nonwork-related, up from 53...