OpenAI Reveals How Users Really Leverage ChatGPT Across Work and Daily Life
Key Points
- Writing assistance dominates usage, representing about 28% of all chats and 42% of work‑related interactions.
- Editing and critiquing text is the most frequent specific writing request (10.6%).
- Information‑seeking grew from 14% to 24.4% of all conversations over a year.
- Decision‑making and problem‑solving appear in 14.9% of professional chats.
- Management and business professionals account for over half of work‑related writing use.
- Multimedia creation, programming, and creative ideation together make up roughly 14% of all interactions.
- Small but measurable usage includes math calculations, personal reflection, and gaming.
- The findings highlight ChatGPT’s role as an advisory and research assistant across diverse tasks.
OpenAI’s analysis of over a million ChatGPT conversations shows that writing assistance dominates usage, especially for work‑related tasks, while information‑seeking and decision‑making are fast‑growing functions. Users frequently request edits, critiques, and translations, and a sizable share turn to the model for business advice. Smaller but notable segments employ the AI for multimedia, programming, creative ideation, calculations, and even gaming. The data highlights ChatGPT’s role as a versatile assistant rather than a simple task executor.
Overview of Conversation Volume and Core Uses
OpenAI examined more than one million ChatGPT interactions spanning from May 2024 to June 2025. The study found that writing‑related prompts are the most common, accounting for roughly 28 percent of all conversations. Within the subset of work‑related chats, the figure climbs to 42 percent, indicating that professionals rely heavily on the model for drafting, editing, and refining text.
Writing Assistance Details
When users ask for help with writing, the most frequent requests involve editing or critiquing existing material, representing 10.6 percent of all conversations. Generating new personal writing or communications follows at 8 percent, while translating text into another language makes up 4.5 percent. Creative fiction writing is the least common among these categories, at just 1.4 percent.
Information‑Seeking Trends
Seeking information has emerged as a major use case. In June 2024, about 14 percent of all chats were tagged as informational queries; this share rose to 24.4 percent by June 2025, surpassing the declining share of writing‑centric prompts, which fell from roughly 35 percent of the earlier sample. At work, informational queries constitute 13.5 percent of conversations, indicating a modest but growing reliance on ChatGPT for research‑type tasks.
Decision‑Making and Problem‑Solving
Another prominent work‑related function is helping users make decisions and solve problems, which appears in 14.9 percent of professional conversations. This usage ranks second only to documenting and recording information, underscoring the model’s role as an advisory and research assistant across various occupations, especially among users in management and business roles, who represent 52 percent of work‑related writing interactions.
Other Notable Applications
Beyond writing and research, ChatGPT supports a range of specialized activities. Multimedia creation or retrieval accounts for 6 percent of chats. Computer programming assistance appears in 4.2 percent, while creative ideation is seen in 3.9 percent of interactions. Mathematical calculations are requested in 3 percent of conversations. Personal reflection and relationship‑focused queries make up 1.9 percent, and gaming or role‑play scenarios are the least common, at 0.4 percent.
Implications
The data paints a picture of ChatGPT as a multi‑purpose tool that users employ not only for straightforward writing tasks but also for strategic decision‑making, research, and creative exploration. Its growing adoption for information retrieval and problem‑solving suggests that enterprises and individuals view the AI as an integral part of their workflow, extending its influence well beyond simple text generation.