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In the past year, we’ve watched a lot of demos from the companies creating the AI chatbots and agents of tomorrow to showcase some of the ways we could use the tech, like OpenAI’s very relatable live example of its ChatGPT Agent helping an employee buy an expensive tuxedo and book hotels in Maui, and we’ve heard a lot of news reports about the most alarming uses of chatbots, from ChatGPT’s role in a death by suicide to Meta’s chatbot allowing “sensual” talk with kids. But while we hear the most about these disturbing incidents, they remain outliers. Well, now we’re starting to get a better picture of how people are really using chatbots on the daily.On Monday, OpenAI released the results of a wide-ranging study that used AI to analyze 1 million chat transcripts, and here are the takeaways: 70% of all queries were not related to work.  The most common use for ChatGPT at work was writing, and mostly just to modify or improve a user’s text.  About half (49%) of all queries were classified as “asking” — for guidance, advice, or information. 40% of messages were requests classified as “doing,” or asking the chatbot to complete a task. Female users contributed more than half of all queries, a massive shift from early on, when the vast majority of users were male. But it’s worth noting that the study determined this in a questionable way. The youth loves AI. Half of all messages were from adults under 26.There’s more detail and a breakdown of tasks by topic here.Meanwhile, rival AI startup Anthropic released its own detailed look at how consumers and businesses are using its Claude AI chatbot.  Unlike OpenAI, Anthropic had good news for those hoping AI could streamline workflows, but bad news for workers themselves. It found that 77% of businesses using Claude were automating whole jobs away rather than collaborating with humans while they do their jobs — so there may be a lot of applications to OpenAI’s platform for people who lose their jobs to AI after all.

THE TAKEAWAY Investors and businesses are anxious to see the real-world returns of all that capex pouring into AI, and the report on ChatGPT use isn’t encouraging, though Anthropic’s shows some promise. Meanwhile, let’s be real: usage is up because kids are back at school, and it’s new fun toys like Google’s Nano Banana that power most of the excitement and chatter — and downloads — for AI, as Google can currently brag about.