ChatGPT’s expanding world of work

Today, we are releasing OpenAI Signals data that explores 165 work activities across nearly 100 countries, revealing how consumers use ChatGPT for work. This data gives researchers a new way to study AI’s role in the economy, with new information on the work activities people bring to ChatGPT—from preparing instructional materials and developing marketing content to programming and analyzing business data.

Researchers can use this data to explore how ChatGPT use for work differs across countries, track changes over time, and match this data to other economic indicators. The release connects ChatGPT usage to 165 work activity categories called Intermediate Work Activities (IWAs). IWAs are commonly-used categories of tasks for the kinds of work people do across occupations. The data is represented quarterly, spanning a period from the first quarter of 2025 through the third quarter of 2026.

Understanding how people use AI for work at a deeper level

Our new data draws on O*NET, a standardized framework that groups occupation-specific tasks into broader categories of work activities shared across occupations. Using a common framework helps researchers compare ChatGPT use with other types of occupational and employment data.

The interactive chart below can be used to explore these work activities within a specific country over time, moving from broad activity groups to more specific activities. The data shows wide variation across countries in how people use ChatGPT for work.

Connecting this data to IWAs revealed that work-related use became less concentrated in the most common activities. That means that countries tended to specialize in their work over time, and different countries specialized in different types of work. These differences might reflect variation in the kind of work done across countries or varying access to AI tools. Exploring these questions is one example of many that researchers can pursue with this new data.