人们如何使用ChatGPT（英）

How People Use ChatGPT∗Aaron Chatterji1,2Tom Cunningham1David Deming3Zo¨e Hitzig1,3Christopher Ong1,3Carl Shan1Kevin Wadman11OpenAI2Duke University3Harvard UniversitySeptember 15, 2025AbstractDespite the rapid adoption of LLM chatbots, little is known about how they are used. Wedocument the growth of ChatGPT’s consumer product from its launch in November 2022 throughJuly 2025, when it had been adopted by around 10% of the world’s adult population.Earlyadopters were disproportionately male but the gender gap has narrowed dramatically, and we findhigher growth rates in lower-income countries. Using a privacy-preserving automated pipeline, weclassify usage patterns within a representative sample of ChatGPT conversations. We find steadygrowth in work-related messages but even faster growth in non-work-related messages, which havegrown from 53% to more than 70% of all usage. Work usage is more common for educated usersin highly-paid professional occupations. We classify messages by conversation topic and find that“Practical Guidance,” “Seeking Information,” and “Writing” are the three most common topicsand collectively account for nearly 80% of all conversations.Writing dominates work-relatedtasks, highlighting chatbots’ unique ability to generate digital outputs compared to traditionalsearch engines. Computer programming and self-expression both represent relatively small sharesof use. Overall, we find that ChatGPT provides economic value through decision support, whichis especially important in knowledge-intensive jobs.∗We acknowledge help and comments from Joshua Achiam, Hemanth Asirvatham, Ryan Beiermeister, Rachel Brown,Cassandra Duchan Solis, Jason Kwon, Elliott Mokski, Kevin Rao, Harrison Satcher, Gawesha Weeratunga, HannahWong, and Analytics & Insights team. We especially thank Tyna Eloundou and Pamela Mishkin who in several wayslaid the foundation for this work. This study was approved by Harvard IRB (IRB25-0983).1IntroductionChatGPT launched in November 2022. By July 2025, 18 billion messages were being sent each weekby 700 million users, representing around 10% of the global adult population.1 For a new technology,this speed of global diffusion has no precedent (Bick et al., 2024).This paper studies consumer usage of ChatGPT, the first mass-market chatbot and likely thelargest.2 ChatGPT is based on a Large Language Model (LLM), a type of Artificial Intelligence (AI)developed over the last decade and generally considered to represent an acceleration in AI capabilities.3The sudden growth in LLM abilities and adoption has intensified interest in the effects of artificialintelligence on economic growth (Acemoglu, 2024; Korinek and Suh, 2024); employment (Eloundouet al., 2025); and society (Kulveit et al., 2025). However, despite the rapid adoption of LLMs, thereis limited public information on how they are used. A number of surveys have measured self-reportedadoption of LLMs (Bick et al., 2024; Pew Research Center, 2025); however there are reas