Picture this: A tool that launched just under three years ago now powers conversations for 10 percent of the world’s adults. That’s the story of ChatGPT, and it’s reshaping how we work, create, and connect. As a digital marketing agency knee-deep in the AI revolution, we’ve been watching this unfold with excitement. A fresh study from OpenAI dives deep into how people actually use ChatGPT, pulling from billions of real interactions up to July 2025. The insights? They’re a goldmine for anyone crafting campaigns, content, or strategies. In this post, we’ll break down the key findings, including some fresh details on user satisfaction and job-specific patterns, and show how they can supercharge your marketing game. If you’re ready to blend human creativity with AI smarts, keep reading.

The Explosive Rise of ChatGPT and Why It Matters to Marketers

ChatGPT hit the scene in November 2022, and by July 2025, it had 700 million weekly users sending 18 billion messages each week, or about 2.5 billion daily and 29,000 per second. That’s a fivefold jump in message volume over the past year alone. What strikes us most is the shift toward everyday use. Back in mid-2024, about half of chats tied to work, with 213 million daily work messages out of 451 million total. Fast forward to June 2025, and non-work messages make up 73 percent of the total, or 1.9 billion daily out of 2.6 billion, growing even quicker than professional ones.

For marketers, this signals a huge opportunity. People aren’t just using AI for spreadsheets or code. They’re turning to it for quick ideas, personal advice, and creative sparks that feed into consumer behavior. As an AI digital marketing agency, we see this as a cue to build campaigns that feel personal and timely, mirroring how folks interact with tools like ChatGPT daily.

How People Are Really Putting ChatGPT to Work (and Play)

The study classified over a million anonymized chats into clear categories, revealing patterns that go beyond the hype. Nearly 80 percent of interactions cluster into three big buckets. Here’s the breakdown:

• Practical Guidance (29 percent): Think step-by-step tips, tutoring on skills, or brainstorming ideas. This tops the list because it’s tailored to the user, like a custom workout plan or event planning hack. Tutoring and teaching alone account for 10.2 percent of all messages and 36 percent of this category, while general how-to advice hits 8.5 percent overall and 30 percent here. In marketing, this translates to hyper-targeted content that solves real problems, boosting engagement rates.
• Seeking Information (24 percent): Factual lookups on news, products, recipes, or people. It grew from 14 percent in mid-2024 to 24 percent now, making it a direct rival to Google, but with conversational flair. Marketers can tap this for SEO strategies that answer queries in natural language, driving more qualified traffic.
• Writing (24 percent): Editing emails, drafting posts, summarizing reports, or translating text. It dipped from 36 percent in mid-2024 but still dominates work with 40 percent of messages, and about two-thirds (67 percent) involve tweaking user-provided content rather than starting from scratch. Subcategories like editing or critiquing lead the pack, followed by personal writing, translation, summaries, and fiction. For us in digital marketing, it’s a reminder that AI excels at polishing copy, freeing teams for big-picture strategy.

Other uses? Coding clocks in at just 4.2 percent, math calculations at 3 percent, and data analysis at a slim 0.4 percent. Multimedia creation, like generating images, jumped from 2 percent to over 7 percent after new features in early 2025. Education shines too, underscoring tutoring’s role. Emotional chats like relationship advice sit at 1.9 percent, and role-playing games at 0.4 percent, totaling just 2.4 percent for self-expression, far lower than some surveys suggest.

These aren’t random stats. They show AI as a versatile sidekick for decision-making. The study sorts intents into “Asking” for advice (49 percent overall, up to 51.6 percent by late June 2025), “Doing” for outputs like drafts (40 percent, down to 34.6 percent), and “Expressing” for casual venting (11 percent, up to 13.8 percent). Work chats lean more toward “Doing” at 56 percent (with 35 percent tied to writing), but “Asking” rules for pros in knowledge-heavy roles and grows fastest overall.

Mapping AI to Real Jobs: Insights from the O*NET Framework

To get granular, researchers linked chats to U.S. Department of Labor job tasks via O*NET. Over half of work-related messages (58 percent) tie to handling info (getting, documenting, interpreting it at 45.2 percent across all messages) or creative problem-solving (decisions, advice, brainstorming at 26.8 percent). The top seven generalized activities cover 76.9 percent overall and 57.9 percent for work, including documenting info (13.2 percent work), making decisions/solving problems (10.6 percent), and thinking creatively (9.3 percent).

Even across fields like management, tech, sales, or admin, the top activities overlap strikingly: Making decisions and solving problems ranks in the top two everywhere possible, documenting info in the top four across all, and thinking creatively in the top three for 10 of 13 groups. Working with computers leads in tech roles, as expected. This uniformity is eye-opening for marketing teams. Whether you’re in ad ops or content strategy, AI shines at supporting those core tasks. It doesn’t replace the human touch, but it amps up efficiency, letting you focus on what drives results, like audience insights or bold campaigns.

Interaction Quality: Why Users Keep Coming Back

One standout finding is how users rate their chats. Positive interactions (where follow-up messages show satisfaction) were three times more common than negative ones in late 2024, but by July 2025, they outpaced negatives fourfold. Self-expression topics score highest, with a good-to-bad ratio over seven, while multimedia and technical help lag at 1.7 and 2.7. “Asking” messages consistently get the best feedback, aligning with their growth and tying into direct user thumbs-up/down data: 86 percent of explicit feedback is positive, and thumbs-up chats are 9.5 times more likely to follow a “good” classification.

This underscores AI’s role in delighting users through helpful, customized responses, a must for marketers aiming to build loyalty.

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Who’s Driving the ChatGPT Boom? Demographics That Shape Your Audience

Not everyone uses AI the same way and understanding that can refine your targeting. Key trends from the data:

• Gender Shift: Early adopters skewed 80 percent male. By mid-2025, it’s flipped, with over half (52 percent) having typically female names. Women lean toward writing and guidance; men toward tech help, info searches, and multimedia like image edits. Tailor your messaging accordingly for broader reach.
• Age Factor: Users 18-25 send 46 percent of all adult messages. Work use ramps up with age, from 23 percent for under-26s to higher for mid-career, dipping to 16 percent for 66-plus. But everyone’s seeing less work-focused chats over time.
• Global Growth: Adoption surged fastest in middle-income countries ($10,000 to $40,000 GDP per person), with dramatic rises in many low-to-middle income spots.
• Education Nuances: Work messages hit 37 percent for those without a bachelor’s, 46 percent for bachelor’s holders, and 48 percent for grad-degree folks. After adjustments, grads are 2 percentage points more likely to “Ask” and 1.6 points less to “Do”. Writing use rises with education levels.
• Occupation Nuances: Tech roles see 57 percent work use, management/business 50 percent, engineering/science 48 percent, other pros 44 percent, and non-pros 40 percent. Among work chats, “Asking” is 47 percent in computers vs. 32 percent in non-pro. Writing dominates management/business at 52 percent, non-pro at 50 percent, and other pros at 49 percent; tech help is 37 percent in computers but just 8 percent elsewhere. Educated pros in high-pay jobs favor advisory AI.

As an AI digital marketing agency, we use these slices to segment audiences smarter, crafting campaigns that resonate where adoption is hottest.

The Bigger Picture: Economic Wins and Smart Strategies Ahead

This research paints ChatGPT as a decision booster, especially in brainy jobs where better choices mean higher output. U.S. users alone peg its value at $97 billion in surplus last year. Satisfaction scores back it up, with “good” interactions outpacing “bad” ones fourfold.

For digital marketers, the takeaway is clear: Lean into AI for support, not substitution. It crafts killer content, scouts trends, and personalizes outreach at scale. But pair it with your expertise to keep things authentic. From the paper’s timeline, features like GPT-5 in August 2025 and image gen in March keep evolving, so stay nimble.

Ready to harness these insights for your brand? Let’s chat. As your go-to AI digital marketing agency, we’re all about turning data like this into campaigns that convert. Drop us a line today for a free AI audit, and let’s make your next move unstoppable.

Source: https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/a253471f-8260-40c6-a2cc-aa93fe9f142e/economic-research-chatgpt-usage-paper.pdf

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