I just can’t use Google anymore.
There. I’ve said it. You probably have too.
I am not alone.
ChatGPT is now a daily ritual for us. Now, the latest and greatest stats are out.
700 million people per week.
2.5 Billion messages a day.
29,000 messages a second.
Countless “are you stupid’s” prompted (just me?)
The most common thing people ask for isn’t for it to do their job.
you can do it!
It’s that.
A nudge. An encouragement. A killer of hesitation.
For so long, the headline “AI will take my job” forced me to look into throwing in the towel and starting out again as a plumber or builder. Now, I think I am safe, for a while longer at least.
OpenAI just released hot new research, on September 15th 2025 on how people are using ChatGPT everyday.
You can see the paper here. Worth a complete read. I’ve compiled some of the most interesting finds below.
A year ago, just over 50% of consumer ChatGPT messages were non-work related.
It’s now 73% non work.
It’s not just new uses showing up with casual prompts to boost the numbers.
Every. Single. Cohort. Increased.
The common use cases of creating meal plans, workouts, travel plans, tutoring, life admin dominated.
They were the gateway drug.
What people are actually doing
Three buckets dominate nearly everything.
Practical guidance
Seeking information
Writing
Together, they make up ~80% of usage.
Practical guidance sits at 29%.
Seeking information grew from mid-teens to ~25%.
Writing hovers at ~26%
What stood out to me?
Vibe coding matters not.
Such a small slice of the pie. 4.2% of messages.
So yes, it can code. Yawn. Boring. Old news.
The importance of an editor
Two thirds of writing requests are editing, critiquing, translating or summarising.
Not “create an article” but “edit my thoughts”.
An assistant, rather than an AI digital twin (thank god).
The ‘ghiblification’ effect
The modern day see what you look like in 50 years. Image generation spiked the multimedia usage. It rapidly cooled to 7% of messages, but for a moment it was hot hot hot.
What’s the Intent?
Let’s break down intent by personal vs work.
Personal use
Every one of the 29,000 daily messages basically fit into one of three intentions:
49% were asking (help me understand, so I can decide)
40% were doing ( draft, structure, generate)
11% were expressing (let me vent, therapist)
In fact, i’ve written more about venting as a use case, in my article from a couple of months ago, AI replaced my friends.
Asking is climbing fast.
Clarity seems to be more important than automation. The data shows user’s are actually happier with the output from asking interactions than doing.
Work use
Doing actually edges out asking.
It makes sense. Work is about output. Almost always.
Zoom in for a second though.
Writing. Almost 40% of all work related messages are writing tasks.
Clear decisions love clean words.
Demographic usage
Usage by gender
Another interesting find.
Early adopters of ChatGPT skewed male. By mid-2025, female usage slightly surpassed male.
No longer a early adopter product, it’s officially crossed the chasm.
I don’t love the research on this one.
As someone named Blake, I think there’s room for improvement here in defining gender.
Usage by age
This one makes perfect sense.
46% of messages come from 18–25 year olds. Older users talk mostly about work, until they get to over 66 years old.
As the graph above shows though, there is a major drift towards non-work.
The question we need to ask
So, if people mostly ask, rather than automate, and they mostly fix words instead of writing from scratch…
What is AI doing to us, really?
I have an idea.
It’s compressing the distance between question to decision and decision to delivery
Seems obvious when you look at the gateway drugs. Tutoring, recipies, workouts. It’s why non-work related use cases lead.
Then, you start using at work.
Satisfying the itch. Of course, you can stop at any time. Or, so you say.
The AI that helps you decide what to do with your weekend is the same AI helping you decide on product roadmap.
That habit, is portable.
Will it continue trending this way?
I’ll make three bets here:
Asking will cross 60% across the board.
Writing stays around 45%.
Tutoring holds at 10%.
There’s no major reason for writing and tutoring to increase. People learn in different ways and through various mediums. Writing is only reducing in importance.
Video is hot. Writing is not.
There are infinite questions and the world is getting more complicated. A friend who’s often right, will be a quiet shoulder to lean on. This friend won’t spill your secrets.
Well, not to anyone but the Uncle Sam(s).
Until next time.
Blake