Artificial intelligence is fast becoming part of the furniture. A decade after IBM’s Watson triumphed on “Jeopardy!,” generative AI models are in kitchens and home offices. People often talk about AI in science fiction terms, yet the most consequential change in 2025 may be its banal ubiquity.
To appreciate how ordinary AI use has become, it helps to remember that this trend didn’t start with generative chatbots. A 2017 Knowledge at Wharton newsletter documented how deep learning algorithms were already powering chatbots on social media and photo apps’ facial recognition functions. Digital assistants such as Siri and Alexa were performing everyday tasks, and AI-powered image generators could create images that fooled 40% of viewers.
When ChatGPT became publicly available on Nov. 30, 2022, the shift felt sudden, but it was built on years of incremental integration. AI’s presence is now so mundane that people consult chatbots for recipes, use them as study partners and rely on them for administrative chores. As a writer and professor who studies ways that generative AI can be an everyday collaborator, I find that recent usage reports show how AI has been woven into everyday life. (Full disclosure: I am a member of OpenAI’s Educator Council, an uncompensated group of higher education faculty who provide feedback to OpenAI on educational use cases.)
Who’s using ChatGPT and why?
Economists at OpenAI and Harvard analyzed 1.5 million ChatGPT conversations from November 2022 through July 2025. Their findings show that adoption has broadened beyond early users: It’s being used all over the world, among all types of people. Adoption has grown fastest in low- and middle-income countries, and growth rates in the lowest-income countries are now more than four times those in the richest nations.
Most interactions revolve around mundane activities. Three-quarters of conversations involve practical guidance, information seeking and writing. These categories are for activities such as getting advice on how to cook an unusual type of food, where to find the nearest pharmacy, and getting feedback on email drafts. More than 70% of ChatGPT use is for nonwork tasks, demonstrating AI’s role in people’s personal lives. The economists found that 73% of messages were not related to work as of June 2025, up from 53% in June 2024.
Claude and the geography of adoption
Anthropic’s economic index paints a similar picture of uneven AI adoption. Researchers at the company tracked users’ conversations with the company’s Claude AI chatbot relative to working-age population. The data shows sharp contrasts between nations. Singapore’s per-capita use is 4.6 times higher than expected based on its population size, and Canada’s is 2.9 times higher. India and Nigeria, meanwhile, use Claude at only a quarter of predicted levels.
In the United States, use reflects local economies, with activity tied to regional strengths: tech in…
