# OpenAI Figure 9: ChatGPT Usage Topic Breakdown

> Empirical breakdown of ChatGPT conversation topics across 1.1 million sampled sessions

A data framework based on OpenAI's usage study analyzing roughly 1.1 million sampled ChatGPT conversations from 2024 to 2025. It categorizes real-world user intent into major buckets like practical guidance, writing, information seeking, and technical help. Founders and product builders use this breakdown as objective reference data to identify market demand and unbundle ChatGPT into vertical software.

## The framework

Coarse categories with granular breakdowns:

Practical Guidance 28.3%: Tutoring Or Teaching 10.2% • How To Advice 8.5% • Health, Fitness, Beauty Or Self Care 5.7% • Creative Ideation 3.9%

Seeking Information 21.3%: Specific Info 18.3% • Purchasable Products 2.1% • Cooking And Recipes 0.9%

Writing 28.1%: Edit Or Critique Provided Text 10.6% • Personal Writing Or Communication 8.0% • Translation 4.5% • Argument Or Summary Generation 3.6% • Write Fiction 1.4%

Technical Help 7.5%: Computer Programming 4.2% • Mathematical Calculation 3.0% • Data Analysis 0.4%

Multimedia 6.0%: Create An Image 4.2% • Generate Or Retrieve Other Media 1.1% • Analyze An Image 0.6%

Other/Unknown 4.6%: Other/Unknown 4.1% • Asking About The Model 0.4%

Self-Expression 4.3%: Relationships And Personal Reflection 1.9% • Greetings And Chitchat 2.0% • Games And Role Play 0.4%

## What it is for

- Identify high-demand AI startup ideas by targeting common user conversation buckets
- Evaluate consumer versus enterprise use cases based on actual platform usage volumes
- Prioritize vertical product features against general AI usage patterns

## Key points

- Practical Guidance category (28.3%), led by tutoring (10.2%) and how-to advice (8.5%)
- Writing category (28.1%), dominated by text critique/editing (10.6%) and personal communication (8.0%)
- Seeking Information category (21.3%), heavily driven by specific factual queries (18.3%)
- Technical Help category (7.5%), split between programming (4.2%) and math (3.0%)
- Multimedia category (6.0%), centered on image creation (4.2%)
- Empirical data reweighted by daily message volume across over 1.1 million conversations

## Pricing

Free

## Details

- Type: Framework
- Category: [Business & Money](https://xiry.app/topics/business-money.md)
- Topic: [Market Research](https://xiry.app/topics/marketing-sales/market-research.md)
- Open source: no
- Platforms: other
- For: Startup founders, product managers, and AI researchers looking for empirical usage data.
- Tags: chatgpt, openai, market research, usage data, product strategy, startups

## Why it was saved

- [@gregisenberg, 15 September 2025](https://x.com/gregisenberg/status/1967737940743717373): Objective data on real ChatGPT demand, usable to pick startup/product directions.

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Updated 11 October 2026. Page: https://xiry.app/resources/openai-figure-9-chatgpt-usage-topic-breakdown

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