Amid Google’s dominance in online search, OpenAI says a growing share of users are turning to ChatGPT to look up information. According to a working paper released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), 24 percent of ChatGPT conversations in July 2025 were information-seeking, up from 14 percent a year earlier.
The report, authored by OpenAI’s Economic Research team and Harvard economist David Deming, analysed 1.5 million user conversations between May 2024 and July 2025. The findings show that most ChatGPT use falls into three categories: information-seeking, practical guidance, and writing tasks, which together account for 77 percent of interactions.
Since launching in 2022, ChatGPT has grown to 700 million weekly users, roughly 10 percent of the global population. But only 30 percent of consumer use is work-related, suggesting that enterprise adoption of generative AI remains slow. OpenAI noted that usage for coding help has fallen sharply as developers shift to APIs and autonomous programming agents.
The study also highlights rapid adoption in lower-income countries, a narrowing gender gap among users, and spikes driven by viral trends such as Ghibli-style AI images earlier this year. OpenAI described the results as evidence that ChatGPT is becoming central to everyday decision-making, saying it “helps improve judgment and productivity, especially in knowledge-intensive jobs.”
