From asking to doing: How the world is putting ChatGPT

What happened

AI is moving from something people ask to something they put to work. For the first time, OpenAI is publishing country-by-country data showing how people around the world use ChatGPT.

As new capabilities emerge, specific use cases command people’s attention and drive adoption. Take multimedia generation, analysis, and retrieval, for example. 8%. While it still lags behind the leading use cases of practical guidance, writing, and information-seeking, multimedia use has been on a consistent upswing year-to-date. Drilling deeper into the category of multimedia messages, the data shows distinctive differences among countries and regions.

The graphic below demonstrates the uptick in Latin America where, in countries like Brazil and Colombia, more than one in ten messages to ChatGPT is categorized as multimedia. The quarter-over-quarter changes in per-capita adoption are not limited to use cases and regions alone. The data also demonstrate differences in adoption by age cohort.

The trend line over the last year shows that the percentage of messages sent by people over 35 increased in almost every country. Year over year, these users now account for a 5% higher share of messages than they did 12 months earlier. Looking at the data country-by-country, adoption among people aged 35 and older is growing particularly quickly in several countries.

The chart below, for example, shows how the share of ChatGPT messages sent by users 35 and above shifted significantly in several European countries. In France and Czechia, the share of messages sent by users 35 or older increased by more than 10 percentage points in the last year.

Why it matters

The findings reveal a technology that is moving beyond answers and into action, spreading beyond early adopters, and becoming useful to more people in more ways: Taken together, the data points to a clear shift: AI is no longer just helping people find answers. It is helping more people, in more places, get things done.

This new data is available to view or download on OpenAI Signals, our hub for data, research, and analysis, from the OpenAI Economic Research Team. These country-level statistics will help people, including policymakers and researchers around the world, better understand how more than 1 billion people are putting ChatGPT to work.

The Signals dataset specifically reflects messages sent within ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, and Pro accounts—the group of accounts generally managed by individuals rather than organizations. The data reflect a trend that has appeared in recent headlines, especially since the rollout of ChatGPT Work: people are increasingly using the technology, particularly for professional pursuits. In these settings, users are more frequently “doing”—using ChatGPT to produce an output or perform a task.

This type of work includes applications such as editing, coding, or conducting an analysis. Our data shows that, across the globe, people are more than twice as likely to use ChatGPT this way at work than outside of work. Outside of work, use is more exploratory: “asking,” or seeking information and clarification, remains the largest category.

Continuing the steadily climbing trend worldwide documented in June, the countries and regions that began their AI journeys with lower ChatGPT per-capita adoption rates are gradually catching up to the established early adopters. For Q2 2026, our team updated our usage rankings across countries (see previous quarterly rankings here). The chart below shows how the per-capita leaderboard changed since the first quarter of 2026.

Notably, in the second quarter, usage in parts of Latin America, Oceania, and Africa increased faster than usage in other parts of the world, with Peru, Uruguay, and Costa Rica rising the most among countries in global rankings. Adoption continues to rise in North America and Europe, but parts of the Southern Hemisphere are catching up in per-capita adoption rates.

What to watch

Almost three-quarters of European countries saw larger-than-average increases in their share of messages sent by these users, while the opposite pattern emerged in some Southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore. Overall, the share of messages sent by these users increased in six of the eight countries in the region, albeit by only a small margin.

OpenAI Signals is the OpenAI Economic Research team’s platform for sharing our data and research with the world. In addition to our research, we publish regular updates on how individuals and businesses⁠ use ChatGPT. We encourage you to download the data here and explore our methodology here⁠(opens in a new window).