ChatGPT turns three years old on Sunday, November 30, marking a rapid rise from an experimental research preview in 2022 to a global digital utility. OpenAI says the chatbot now answers roughly 29,000 messages per second and serves around 800 million weekly active users.
What started as a curiosity has become embedded in daily routines, used for everything from planning trips to choosing groceries. OpenAI’s newly released usage statistics provide a rare look at how people rely on ChatGPT at scale.
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How people in the UK use ChatGPT
OpenAI shared a UK-specific breakdown of ChatGPT usage, revealing a strong focus on practical and personal productivity tasks rather than technical or experimental use cases.
The most common uses in the UK are writing, drafting, and editing communications, followed closely by practical guidance such as cooking and DIY advice. Seeking general information, health and fitness guidance, and learning support also rank highly.
More technical tasks such as coding, analysis, and calculations appear lower on the list. This suggests that for many UK users, ChatGPT functions as a low-friction assistant for everyday tasks rather than a specialist business or engineering tool.
Productivity over novelty
The UK data reinforces a broader trend. Users increasingly treat ChatGPT as a replacement for repetitive Googling or informal expert advice. It fills the space between quick searches and professional services, offering guidance without cost, delay, or friction.
While creative uses like brainstorming and image generation remain popular, they are secondary to life administration and self-improvement. ChatGPT is becoming something people reach for automatically when they need clarity or help.
Global usage patterns reveal a surprise
OpenAI also shared global data on how people interact with ChatGPT. Three-quarters of conversations worldwide focus on practical guidance, seeking information, and writing-related tasks.
For work-related use, editing existing text is the dominant request. Users most often ask ChatGPT to revise, critique, translate, or improve text rather than generate new content from scratch. This mirrors image usage patterns as well.
The most-used ChatGPT features worldwide
When OpenAI ranked ChatGPT’s most-used features globally, the results challenged some assumptions about AI creativity.
The top features are uploading an image, searching the web, using a reasoning model, generating an image, data analysis, and dictation. Notably, uploading images ranks higher than generating them.
This suggests users prefer enhancing or interpreting their own content rather than creating entirely synthetic material. Much like text editing, people appear to use ChatGPT as an assistant rather than a replacement.
Shopping may be the next frontier
Shopping and product research currently sit lower in usage rankings, but that may change quickly. OpenAI has already launched shopping-focused research tools, positioning ChatGPT as a potential alternative to traditional search and e-commerce platforms.
If adoption accelerates, companies like Amazon and Google may face growing competition for consumer attention at the research and discovery stage.
A permanent shift, not a passing trend
Whether or not the broader AI hype cycle stabilizes, ChatGPT’s role appears secure. The data shows it has already crossed the threshold from novelty to necessity for millions of users.
Whatever the future holds for advanced AI systems, practical, accessible tools like ChatGPT have firmly embedded themselves into everyday digital life.
