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Early adoption · Adopters

Work-related share of ChatGPT consumer messages

emerging65/95 confidence, mixed or hard to operationalisegrade Bcoincident

1What this measures

Share of ChatGPT consumer-plan messages classified as work-related in OpenAI's usage paper (Chatterji and co-authors), with the NBER abstract's complement (non-work above 70%) alongside.

Why it matters. The largest usage dataset there is says most use is personal. Diffusion into work is the slower, deeper channel the paper expects.

Proxy types
behaviour, product
Unit
share
Cadence
annual
Valve
product to adoption

2How we track this

  • series openai_blog.chatgpt_consumer.work_related_message_share.pt
  • series nber.chatgpt_consumer.non_work_message_share.pt
  • source NBER working papers and chapters · default tier 6 · NBER; abstract quotation
  • source OpenAI research posts · default tier 7 · OpenAI; short quotation
Normal band
≤ 40.0%
Fast band
≥ 60.0%
Falsifying
—

Normal = under 40% of consumer messages are work-related, as personal use led with PCs and the web; fast = a work majority, meaning the consumer product has been pulled into production workflows. Between is `emerging`.

Applied to openai_blog.chatgpt_consumer.work_related_message_share.pt.

3Tracker interpretation

About a quarter of messages are work, and the share fell through 2025 as consumer use grew faster.

4Evidence

Latest point
27.0%as of 2025-06-30
chatgpt_consumer
Value the bands apply to
27.0%as of 2025-06-30

2 observations. Hollow points are disputed (see counterevidence). Every point links to its observation.

5Status and reasoning

emergingsince 2026-09-10 · evaluate

First scoring. 27% of ChatGPT consumer messages were work-related in June 2025 (OpenAI usage paper Table 1; NBER abstract gives non-work above 70%), inside the normal band; the numeric source is the company's own paper (tier 7), so emerging.

6Timeline notes

  • 2025-06-30 chatgpt_consumer · 27.0%as of 2025-06-30

7Counterevidence

What cuts against this reading

Consumer plans only; enterprise and API traffic (where work concentrates) are excluded; classification is model-based.

8Update history

  1. 2026-09-10unmeasured to emergingconf — → 65 · evaluate

    First scoring. 27% of ChatGPT consumer messages were work-related in June 2025 (OpenAI usage paper Table 1; NBER abstract gives non-work above 70%), inside the normal band; the numeric source is the company's own paper (tier 7), so emerging.

    obs:71978c14

9Confidence

65 / 95 — mixed or hard to operationalise

Confidence is independent of status: 90–95 multiple strong independent sources; 70–89 good evidence, some ambiguity; 50–69 mixed or hard to operationalise; below 50 limited or vague.

10Related