What employees really use AI for at work – HRD America
A new report by OpenAI found work activities associated with ChatGPT were across different kinds of occupations
Writing has emerged as the top work-related use case for ChatGPT, according to its developer OpenAI, in a new report on how the technology is being utilised in the workplace.
OpenAI this month released a first-of-its-kind view on how the technology is being used personally and professionally by looking at internal ChatGPT message data.
It found that 27% of all daily message counts to ChatGPT in June 2025 were work-related, down from 47% in June 2024.
"The decrease in the share of work-related messages is primarily due to changing usage within each cohort of users rather than a change in the composition of new ChatGPT users," the study read.
According to the research, writing is the most common use case at work. It accounted for 40% of work-related messages on average in 2025.
"About two-thirds of all Writing messages ask ChatGPT to modify user text (editing, critiquing, translating, etc.) rather than creating new text from scratch," it said.
Other use cases for ChatGPT in workplaces include practical guidance (24.1%), seeking information (13.5%), and technical help (10.0%).
"We find that the work activities associated with ChatGPT usage are highly similar across very different kinds of occupations," the report read.
"Overall, we find that information-seeking and decision support are the most common ChatGPT use cases in most jobs."
Meanwhile, the report also answers the question of whether ChatGPT can really improve productivity in workplaces.
"We argue that ChatGPT likely improves worker output by providing decision support, which is especially important in knowledge-intensive jobs where better decision-making increases productivity," it said.
"Our findings are most consistent with Ide and Talamas (2025), who develop a model where AI agents can serve either as co-workers that produce output or as co-pilots that give advice and improve the productivity of human problem-solving."
The findings come as employers across the world adopt generative AI tools with the expectation of enhancing productivity in their organisations.
This year, adoption has become so widespread that some firms have hinted at reducing their workforce in the future as AI becomes more integrated.
