ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot launched in late 2022, has become one of the fastest-growing technologies in history.
A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that by July 2025 around 10 percent of the world’s adult population, more than 700 million people, were using ChatGPT every week.
The speed of adoption is striking. Facebook took more than four years to reach 100 million users. ChatGPT managed it in just two months.
Who is using it?
The study shows ChatGPT’s user base has widened quickly. In its early months, more than 60 percent of users were men. By mid-2025, that gap had almost halved. Adoption has been especially fast in lower-income countries, where growth reached more than 150 percent year on year, compared with about 40 percent in North America.
While people aged 18 to 34 remain the heaviest users, older generations are catching up. OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, recently observed that “older people use ChatGPT as a Google replacement. Maybe people in their 20s and 30s use it like a life advisor, and people in college use it as an operating system.”
Everyday help more than office work
The research highlights that most use of ChatGPT is personal rather than professional. More than 70 percent of conversations studied were not work related. People ask it to explain difficult topics, draft stories, plan meals or offer everyday guidance.
Work use, however, is growing steadily. Around 30 percent of conversations are linked to jobs, with many focused on writing and editing. Professionals use ChatGPT to produce emails, summarise reports, translate documents and provide structured decision support.
What people ask most
Researchers classified millions of anonymised chats into themes. Nearly 80 percent of conversations fell into three groups: practical guidance, seeking information and writing. Practical guidance includes everyday “how-to” questions such as preparing a CV or planning a trip. Seeking information covers factual queries, from science questions to economics explanations. Writing involves drafting, polishing or summarising text.
Other categories, such as programming, creative writing and self-expression, were much smaller, each accounting for less than 10 percent of overall use.
Why this matters
The authors argue that ChatGPT’s biggest economic impact will be in knowledge-intensive jobs. By saving time and making complex information easier to handle, the chatbot could raise productivity across many industries.
But the heavy share of personal use shows that people also see it as a general assistant for daily life. Teachers use it to generate lesson ideas, while healthcare staff turn to it to help explain medical terms in plain language. Entrepreneurs experiment with it when drafting product pitches or brand names.
Altman himself has explained how he relies on the tool in his own work. “One thing I use it for every day is help with summarisation,” he told Time magazine. “I paste it in there every morning. I use it to translate an article, and I used it to help me draft a tweet I was having a hard time with.”
Looking ahead
The researchers caution that their data, based on anonymised chat logs, cannot capture every nuance of how people interact with the system. They also note that usage patterns may change as AI develops further and as new competitors appear.
Even so, the findings provide one of the clearest snapshots yet of how generative AI is shaping daily life. From office emails to children’s stories, and from lesson plans to social media posts, ChatGPT is becoming a regular companion in how millions of people around the world think, write and learn.
