openaienmodel: gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
How ChatGPT adoption has expanded
Key Points
- 50% more messages/day after six months
- Fastest relative growth in Africa and Asia
- Non-English users now exceed 50%
Summary
New OpenAI Signals analysis (accounts created 2025-10-15 to 2026-05-01; activity through 2026-05-31) shows ChatGPT usage both widened and deepened globally. Users send more messages and try more capabilities over time, adoption grew fastest in Africa and Asia (and lower-HDI countries), and non-English and female-name usage increased, with Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic leading non-English growth.
Key Points
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Usage growth over time
- Six months after sign-up users send ~50% more messages per day and have doubled the number of distinct capabilities they use versus their first 28 days.
- "Depth" = messages in prior 28 days relative to first 28 days; "Breadth" = cumulative capabilities used (53 capability categories).
- Data based on 0.1% sample; excludes users under 18, banned users, and accounts without messages in first 28 days.
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Regional and development trends
- Weekly active users increased across all continents since July 2023; fastest relative growth in Africa and Asia.
- Lower-HDI countries show the fastest relative growth; active = sent a message in the 7 days before month start.
- Countries where ChatGPT does not operate are excluded from regional analyses.
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User composition and languages
- Users with names typically classified as feminine now represent most usage in aggregate (name-to-gender crosswalk used; gender not collected).
- Non-English users now exceed 50% of active users; leading non-English languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic.
- Uzbek, Kazakh, and Burmese had the largest relative increases among languages with ≥1M active users.
Data & Methodology notes
- Analysis uses aggregated OpenAI Signals metrics; message classifier maps messages to 53 categories to measure capabilities.
- Exclusions: users under 18, banned users, users without initial activity, and countries where ChatGPT is unavailable.
- Researchers can download the Signals data for further exploration; Signals is updated over time.
Practical guidance for engineers
- Prioritize localization and multilingual support (Spanish/Portuguese/Arabic and emerging languages).
- Track both depth (engagement) and breadth (feature adoption) to measure product retention and expansion.
- Design low-cost / low-bandwidth access patterns for growth in lower-HDI regions.
- Treat name-to-gender inferences cautiously; avoid inferring or storing sensitive attributes without consent.