ChatGPT Usage Soars: Adoption Trends and User Demographics Revealed in Recent Studies

ChatGPT Use Is Rising But a Surprising Number of Americans Still Haven't Heard of It

About a third of American adults say they've used the generative AI tool ChatGPT, while one in five say they've never heard of it, according to new survey results released this week by the Pew Research Center. The 34% who said they have used the gen AI tool from OpenAI include 58% of adults under 30, the largest share among any age cohort. The share of ChatGPT users drops with age: 41% of those 30 to 49, 25% of those 50 to 64 and 10% of those 65 and older. There is also a correlation with education. Among adults with bachelor's or post-graduate degrees, about half reported using the AI tool. And just 33% of those with some college and 18% of those with a high school diploma or less said the same. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of CNET, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) The use of ChatGPT and other gen AI tools has grown dramatically over just the past couple of years. ChatGPT surged to popularity at the end of 2022 and has become a household name in the few years since. The Pew survey bears that out. The share of American adults saying they used ChatGPT has almost doubled since July 2023. But ChatGPT isn't the only tool of its kind. Other tech companies have produced their own large language models, including Google's Gemini and Meta's Llama. The Pew survey, from a panel of 5,123 adults from Feb. 24 to March 2, shows how people have come to use these tools, which can perform various tasks from writing documents to providing answers similar to search results (albeit maybe not quite as accurate). 28% of employed adults said they used AI tools at work, 26% said they used it to learn something new, and 22% said they used it for entertainment. Other recent Pew results found many American workers had doubts about using AI in their jobs, and many were worried about the effects it would have. Other research has found that even as AI has become increasingly common in the workplace, it's not without social costs, as colleagues and managers may judge those who admit to using AI. Of course, not everyone is using these tools. The Pew results found 20% of adults have heard nothing about ChatGPT. That figure is highest among those over the age of 65 at 33% or with a high school diploma or less at 34%. The Pew survey results match up with a separate study released this week by Menlo Ventures, which surveyed more than 5,000 US adults about AI use. That study found 61% of respondents said they'd used AI in the past six months, and 19% interact with AI daily. Its results found that while Gen Z had the largest share of AI users among any generation at 76%, it was millennials who were more likely to use AI daily at 24%, compared to Gen Z at 21%. The Menlo Ventures study looked at the most popular AI tools and found ChatGPT is the "default tool" of 28% of AI users, followed by Gemini at 23%.

ChatGPT was downloaded 30 million times last month - but its user base data is more shocking

It was the world's most popular app in March - even though most US adults have never used it. According to an X post data aggregation company Similarweb, the ChatGPT app for iOS was downloaded around 29.6 million times over the past 28 days; over the same time period, App Store downloads of TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X reached a combined total of about 32.9 million -- a difference of around 10.6%. Also: Anthropic launches new AI feature to build your own customizable chatbots However, as critics in the X thread pointed out, the social apps in question have had much more lead time to gain adoption. Still, ChatGPT was the most downloaded app in the world in April, according to app analytics site Appfigures, surpassing both Instagram and TikTok. According to recent court filings reported by The Information, ChatGPT had around 600 million monthly active users in March, compared to around 350 million for Google's Gemini. Similarweb also reported in April that Gemini downloads had surpassed those of ChatGPT for Android devices, indicating ChatGPT still hasn't cracked Google's presence within its own community. Also: 5 reasons I turn to ChatGPT every day - from faster research to replacing Siri (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) A report from Pew Research Center published Wednesday found that the number of US adults who have used ChatGPT at least once (about 34%) has doubled since 2023. The report also found, however, that the majority of US adults (66%) have never used the chatbot, and many (20%) have never even heard of it. Also: Could this be the reason you cancel your ChatGPT subscription? Released to the public in Nov. 2022, ChatGPT quickly became a viral sensation, reaching its first million users in just five days. Its success sparked a race among leading tech companies like Google and Meta to invest in their own generative AI technology, an industry-wide trend which in turn made Nvidia -- the US chip manufacturer that dominates the market for GPUs, the technological cornerstone of generative AI -- the wealthiest company in the world. ChatGPT has evolved and grown significantly since its public debut: it's been equipped with parent company OpenAI's image-generating technology, given the power of speech via Advanced Voice Mode, and integrated with Apple's Siri AI assistant. All of this adds up to a broad strategic initiative within OpenAI to make its core chatbot the average consumer's go-to, general-purpose AI assistant -- especially as the company moves into hardware and even potentially workspace productivity tools. Want more stories about AI? Sign up for Innovation, our weekly newsletter. Given the last numbers of app downloads reported by Similarweb (which doesn't account for all the users who are exclusively using it via desktop), the company seems to be making good progress towards that goal.