From asking to doing: How the world is putting ChatGPT to work

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. 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:

- From asking to doing: At work, people are more than twice as likely to use ChatGPT to complete a task or create something, from writing and coding to analysis, than they are outside work.

- AI adoption is becoming more global: Countries across Latin America, Africa, and Oceania are catching up to early adopters, narrowing the global adoption gap.

- AI is moving beyond text: Multimedia is the fastest-growing use case globally, accounting for 7.8% of messages and more than one in ten in countries including Brazil and Colombia.

- AI is reaching beyond early adopters: Usage among people over 35 is rising in nearly every country. In France and Czechia, their share of messages increased by more than 10 percentage points in the past year.

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.

At work, “doing” dominates

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.

The adoption gap is closing

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.

Change in country messages-per-capita rank, Q1 2026 to Q2 2026 (positive = improved)

Note: For 144 countries, blue indicates an improvement in rank, brown a decline, and gray no change. Hatching identifies excluded or ineligible countries.

As new capabilities emerge, specific use cases command people’s attention and drive adoption. Take multimedia generation, analysis, and retrieval, for example. Since the release of ChatGPT Images 2.0 in April 2026, the share of messages across the world focused on multimedia use increased to 7.8%. 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.

Note: Share of classified individual ChatGPT messages categorized as multimedia, by country, in Q2 2026. The refreshed release includes 126 countries with an eligible Q2 multimedia estimate; striped countries are outside the release or have no eligible data.

ChatGPT adoption grew worldwide among people over 35

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.