OpenAI’s recent economic report reveals that women are now using ChatGPT more than men, marking a significant shift from the initial weeks after its launch when an estimated 80% of users were male. The report underscores the importance of closing the gender gap in AI usage to ensure women are not excluded as AI transforms various aspects of work and life.
The shift in gender demographics was identified through an analysis of user names, categorized as typically male, female, or uncertain. While not a scientifically precise method, this approach provides insights into broad trends. According to OpenAI chief economist Ronnie Chatterji, the key to achieving gender balance has been the expansion of ChatGPT’s user base beyond early adopters, driven by excitement around its practical applications.
The economic report is based on a sample of 1.5 million conversations from ChatGPT’s approximately 700 million weekly users. The analysis revealed that 80% of usage falls into three main categories: practical guidance, information search, and writing assistance. More specialized uses, such as coding, were less prevalent in the sampled data.
The study focused on messages from logged-in users over the age of 18, excluding those who opted out of data usage for training purposes. AI was employed to categorize the content of these messages, ensuring that researchers did not have access to individual chats. Data from Similarweb indicates that ChatGPT remains the most popular AI chatbot globally, with nearly 6 billion monthly desktop and mobile visits. This is approximately eight times more than Google’s Gemini and about nine times more than the Chinese open-source application DeepSeek.
