OpenAI data: one in five consumer ChatGPT messages now seek information
Information seeking reached 20.7% of messages on consumer ChatGPT plans in August, edging past writing at 20.6% for the first time in OpenAI's Signals series, which begins in July 2024. Writing regained the lead in September at 21.4% against 20.2%.
The figures come from Signals V3.0, released on 26 October, which samples one million messages a month from users aged 18 and over on Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans. Enterprise and Codex are excluded. Over the full series, writing fell from 34.1% of messages in July 2024 to 21.4% in September 2026, while information seeking rose from 16.7% to 20.2%.
Seeking information covers requests for facts, questions about products and services for sale, and cooking help, so the share of messages that could surface a brand is not broken out. Practical guidance, including how-to advice and tutoring, has been the largest topic every month since March 2025 and stood at 28.1% in September.
Work-related messages made up 32.2% of the total in September, and the share of those seeking information climbed to 15.2% that month from 13.9% in August. OpenAI also said work use is spreading beyond the most common tasks: across 74 countries with data in every quarter, the ten most common activities fell from 56.0% of classified work messages in Q1 2025 to 51.1% in Q3 2026.
Signals uses the same classifier prompts as a 2025 OpenAI and Harvard paper, but reports a smaller rise in information seeking: 18.3% in June 2025 against the paper's 24%. OpenAI did not explain the gap, and each version revises earlier months, so figures should be cited with the version number.
Reported by Search Engine Journal ↗
Topics: ChatGPT, Measurement