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

OpenAI has released new country-by-country data through its OpenAI Signals hub, detailing adoption trends and usage behaviors for more than 1 billion individuals using ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, and Pro accounts. According to the findings, artificial intelligence is transitioning from a tool used primarily to ask questions into one used to execute actions and complete tasks. The data reveals that people are more than twice as likely to use ChatGPT to create something or complete a task at work—such as writing, coding, or analysis—compared to outside of work, where exploratory information-seeking remains dominant. Global adoption is also becoming more widespread. Countries in Latin America, Africa, and Oceania are catching up to early adopters, with per-capita adoption rankings showing significant rises in countries like Peru, Uruguay, and Costa Rica during the second quarter of 2026. Furthermore, multimedia generation has emerged as the fastest-growing use case globally following the release of ChatGPT Images 2.0 in April 2026, reaching 7.8% of messages worldwide and exceeding 10% in countries like Brazil and Colombia. Demographically, ChatGPT use is expanding beyond early adopters, with the share of messages sent by users aged 35 and older increasing in nearly every country over the past year. In nations such as France and Czechia, the share of messages from this older cohort grew by more than 10 percentage points. OpenAI states that these statistics are intended to help policymakers, researchers, and the public understand evolving global interactions with ChatGPT.