How people use ChatGPT vs Claude – and what the differences reveal

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ZDNET’s key takeaways.

• The majority of ChatGPT usage is non-work and focused on writing tasks.
• Claude, in particular coding, is used for automation.
• AI adoption in the United States is uneven. Wealthier regions are first to benefit. Two of the largest AI companies have revealed what people do with their models. Also: The top AI chatbots for 2025

  OpenAI published a research paper analyzing millions ChatGPT conversations. Anthropic released its third Economic Index Report on Claude usage. Both contain plenty of charts and statistics, but also some interesting details about AI users and their motivations. Together, the two articles provide an interesting look at how AI is affecting our daily lives, including work, school and home.

  Disclosure: Ziff Davis (parent company of ZDNET) filed a lawsuit in April 2025 against OpenAI alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’ copyrights when training and operating their AI systems.

  The majority of ChatGPT chats ask about non-work related topics

  OpenAI’s new study The Use of ChatGPT by Peopleanalysed a random sampling of conversations between May 2024 and June 2025. The first surprise is that non-work usage has surpassed work use. In June 2024, approximately 47% of ChatGPT message were work-related. By June 2025, this dropped to 27%, even though daily messages increased from 451 million to roughly 2.6 billion during the same time period.

  What are the top categories? Practical guidance (which includes teaching, tutoring, and how-tos), searching for information (about people and current events, products and recipes), and writing. According to OpenAI, these collectively account “nearly 80% of all conversations,” of usage. Coding accounts for 4.2% of usage.

  Also:The best AI for coding (including a new winner – and what not to use)

  So, while the world (and your boss) may have imagined people using ChatGPT to fly through tedious work tasks or for computer programming, the majority are actually turning to it for help, advice, learning, and writing.

  OpenAI’s researchers grouped user interactions into three buckets: Asking (seeking information or guidance), Doing (producing outputs or completing tasks), and Expressing (sharing opinions or feelings). They estimate about 49% of messages are Asking, 40% are Doing, and 11% are Expressing. As of July 2025, 56% of work messages were in the Doing category.

  Also:Is ChatGPT Plus still worth $20 when the free version offers so much?

  In fact, when ChatGPT is used at work, over 40% of that use is for writing — and more than two-thirds of that is editing text people wrote themselves. So when people turn to ChatGPT on the job, it’s more for proofreading than for fully generating text from scratch.

  Most Claude chats are automation directives (for coding)

  Anthropic’s The Economic Index examines how Claude is utilized by consumers and companies. The report divides tasks in two categories: Automation (where Claude does work with little input – either directive, with minimal interactions, or feedback loops where users relay results) and Augmentation. The report analyzed randomly selected transcripts to find that directive conversations, where a user asks Claude for a task to be completed with minimal interaction, rose sharply from 27% in December 2024 to Jan 2025 to 39% in February to March 2025.

  See also:According to Anthropic,

  The most popular work tasks that people use Claude AI to complete.

  Since last December, people seem to be delegating entire tasks to Claude with little back-and-forth — telling it to do something and trusting the output. For the first time, Anthropic Automation is common in enterprise settings. Anthropic reports that 77% of its API conversations with customers have “automation patterns,” and the “vast majority” is directive. About half of users use Businesses are relying more on Claude.ai to automate tasks, especially coding.

  Anthropic stated that 44% of API traffic was related to coding (computer-related and mathematical tasks), as opposed to 36% for Claude.ai. It said that Claude.ai is used more for educational and writing tasks.

  Where and who is using AI? ChatGPT is growing rapidly worldwide. By July 2025, there will be 700 million users of ChatGPT. The report notes that growth in low-and middle-income countries has been faster over the past year. In the early days of ChatGPT, 80% of users were male. This share has now dropped to 48% as of June 2025. More active users have “typically feminine” for their first names.

  The majority of users are also young, with almost half of all adult messages coming from people younger than 26. Researchers also found that highly educated professionals “substantially more” are more likely to use ChatGPT at work.

  The only way millennials are beating Gen Z in AI adoption.

  In terms of Claude usage, Anthropic reported that the US is the largest country (21.6%). Israel is the leader in “global per capita Claude usage.” The nation’s “AI Usage Index” score of 7 means that people in Israel use Claude seven times more than you would expect based on Israel’s population of working age.

  California is the top state in the US for usage, accounting for 25.3% of Claude activity. This is mostly IT-related. Washington, DC is the state with the highest AUI score per capita when adjusted for population size. People in Washington, DC use Claude four times as often as their share of US working-age populations would suggest.

  And just why are DC folks using Claude so much? “Document editing, information provision, and job applications,” Anthropic says.

  Also:Most developers use AI in their daily workflows – but they don’t trust it

  Raising concerns about inequality, Anthropic warned uneven AI adoption could mirror the history of electricity and the internet, where wealthy countries pulled ahead of developing ones. The report noted a “1% higher GDP per capita was associated with a 0.7% higher Anthropic AI Usage Index,” suggesting richer regions may already be capturing most of the productivity gains.

  “People in higher-income countries are more likely to use Claude, more likely to seek collaboration rather than automation, and more likely to pursue a breadth of uses beyond coding,” Anthropic says. Countries with lower AI adoption per capita concentrate overwhelmingly on coding tasks, too — with over half of all usage in India, compared to roughly a third globally.

  Common themes

  Both OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s reports look at how people interact with AI: asking versus doing.

  For example, Anthropic focused on whether Claude was used for automation or augmentation and found that users prefer automation and giving directives with little input, rather than collaborating with the model. OpenAI, meanwhile, broke user interactions into asking, doing, or expressing categories, and found that users tend to use it for asking.

  Also:The fastest growing AI chatbot lately? It’s not ChatGPT or Gemini

  Both studies also looked at the kinds of tasks people use AI for, such as writing or coding. While ChatGPT and Claude are still used for writing, ChatGPT users often ask the AI to edit non-work-related text they wrote themselves. Claude, meanwhile, is used more for automation, especially coding, with businesses directing it to complete tasks.

  Add it all up, and you get an interesting snapshot of AI so far and how it differs between competitors.

  Artificial Intelligence