OpenAI has released new Signals data drawn from millions of consumer messages sent between July 2024 and the end of 2025. The company looked through these conversations to find out what people actually do with ChatGPT when they’re not at work.
The results paint a surprisingly human picture. The analysis divides interactions into three areas. Questions include moments when you want information or clarification. Completion includes tasks where you need ChatGPT to produce something. Expressing is when users communicate thoughts or feelings without expecting an output or response. This third category comes up again and again, suggesting that people are finding something in the chatbot beyond productivity.
Expressive use is more than just venting
This expressive bucket isn’t just about emotional outbursts. It covers any moment when a user surfaces with a thought, opinion, or feeling that needs to go somewhere. The data shows that these exchanges represent a consistent portion of overall usage and are not a strange edge case.
The Signals page also tracks the likelihood of work-related messages by consumer plan type. Free and paid users rely on ChatGPT differently for professional tasks. The company notes that this analysis excludes enterprise customers, so workplace adoption is likely higher than these numbers show.
Younger users and global trends
Age also tells part of the story. OpenAI studied users who volunteered their age, and younger groups aged 18 to 34 accounted for the majority of in-person engagement. They seem more comfortable viewing ChatGPT as a space for thinking out loud rather than just another work tool.
The global rankings add another layer. The company ranked countries based on ChatGPT messages sent per capita and limited the analysis to countries with more than 5 million people. The United States gets its own state-by-state breakdown. OpenAI does not operate in several countries, including China, Russia, and North Korea, so these markets are completely outside the data. The company also tracks the use of first names categorized as typically male or female, but emphasizes that it does not directly collect gender information.
What’s next for AI relationships?
The current dataset runs until the end of 2025, but OpenAI plans to update the Signals page with new metrics and breakdowns over time.
Future updates will reveal whether expression usage continues to grow or whether new categories emerge as people find stranger, more personal ways to interact with AI. The conclusion for now is simple. You are not the only one who treats ChatGPT as more than just a work chatbot.
