Overview

• An analysis of 1.5 million ChatGPT conversations from November 2022 to July 2025 by NBER, OpenAI’s Economic Research team and Harvard’s David Deming details how usage has shifted.
• Non-work messages grew from 53% to more than 70% of interactions, placing work-related use at roughly 30%.
• Practical guidance, information search and writing account for nearly 80% of conversations, with writing representing 40% of work-related chats.
• User demographics have moved toward gender balance, with female-typical names rising from 37% in January 2024 to 52% in July 2025, and younger users generating 46% of messages.
• Adoption has accelerated in low- and middle-income countries, with growth in the poorest nations exceeding high-income peers by more than fourfold by May 2025, as OpenAI frames the tool as a consumer productivity driver that can create value beyond traditional metrics like GDP.