OpenAI Signals reports that ChatGPT use has both widened and deepened around the world: over time users send more messages per day, try a broader set of capabilities, and the user base is becoming more geographically and linguistically diverse.
Sample and timeframe
The analysis is based on a 0.1% sample of accounts created between 2025-10-15 and 2026-05-01, with activity observed through 2026-05-31. The study excludes banned users, users under 18 years of age, and accounts that did not send any messages during the first 28 days after creation.
How depth and breadth are measured
- "Depth" measures the number of messages a user sent in the previous 28 days relative to the number they sent in the 28 days after account creation.
- "Breadth" measures the cumulative number of capabilities a user has used relative to the count in the first 28 days. Capabilities are classified into 53 categories by a classifier.
OpenAI reports that six months after signing up, users sent 50% more messages per day than at signup and doubled the number of distinct tasks they had tried on ChatGPT.
Geographic and development-level patterns
ChatGPT adoption has increased sharply on every continent since July 2023. In relative terms the fastest growth has been in Africa and Asia.
Each series in the analysis plots the change in weekly active ChatGPT users by region relative to that region's baseline rate in July 2023. Users are considered active if they sent a message in the seven days before the start of each month. Countries where ChatGPT does not operate and users under 18 are excluded.
A similar pattern appears when grouping countries by the Human Development Index (HDI): lower-HDI countries have shown the fastest relative growth in weekly active users since July 2023. OpenAI notes it has continued to offer low-cost access via the Free and Go plans.
Usage by name-based gender estimates
Messages from users with names typically associated with women have increased and now represent most usage globally. Countries where messages from typically feminine names most significantly exceed those from typically masculine names include Brazil, Colombia, Poland, and Namibia. By contrast, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mali show the most concentrated usage by typically masculine names.
OpenAI emphasizes that it does not collect users' gender; this breakdown uses name-to-gender crosswalks and excludes names that are not typically masculine or typically feminine. Countries are omitted when at least half of active users' names cannot be classified.
Language shifts
Non-English ChatGPT usage has grown alongside global usage: users who predominantly use a language other than English now make up more than half of active users. The leading non-English languages on ChatGPT are Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic.
Uzbek, Kazakh, and Burmese showed the largest percentage increases in share of active users since July 2023. The language analysis was limited to languages with at least 1 million active users in June 2026, and a user's primary language was determined by the plurality of their messages.
Methodological notes and purpose
OpenAI Signals is an ongoing effort to provide researchers and policymakers data to understand how AI is affecting and will affect the economy. The analysis has methodological limitations (for example, name-based gender estimation and exclusion of non-classifiable names), and certain user groups and countries where ChatGPT does not operate are not included in the dataset.
Taken together, the findings give a clearer picture of how people around the world are incorporating ChatGPT into work, learning, and daily life, while clarifying the assumptions and exclusions inherent in the analysis.
