Meet the typical at-work ChatGPT user: A millennial secretly submitting writing tasks who's a bit worried AI will replace them

• Americans are using ChatGPT to be more productive at work.
• Some are doing so in secret while their employers establish formal policies.

Most Americans are just playing around with ChatGPT — if they've even heard of it at all. Some people, however, are using the generative AI technology to boost their productivity at work.

AJ Eckstein, a 24-year-old consultant at a Fortune 500 company, uses AI tools on the daily to draft work emails, he previously told Insider. Lais Silva, a Gen Z content manager at a social-media startup, said she'd essentially replaced Google with ChatGPT.

"It's much faster than Googling it, choosing a supposedly reliable source, and reading it all until maybe I find the answer I need," she told Insider in February.

Since the chatbot was released to the public last November, Americans in a wide range of professions, including realtors, lawyers, teachers, designers, and marketing professionals, have experimented with ways ChatGPT might make them more productive at work. As more people familiarize themselves with AI technologies — and some businesses begin formally adopting them — they could become increasingly common workplace tools.

Who are the Americans using ChatGPT at work? They're likely to be millennial, college-educated workers who are using the chatbot for writing tasks — often in secret — according to surveys and workers' accounts.

The typical worker using ChatGPT is a millennial with a college degree

A March Pew Research survey of over 10,000 US adults found that 58% of people had heard of ChatGPT. The demographics that reported the most familiarity with the chatbot were men, Asians, upper-income individuals, and those with a postgraduate degree.

But most of these people said they had never tried ChatGPT, much less used it at work. Among employed respondents who had heard of the chatbot, only 12% said they had used the technology to help complete work tasks.

At first, younger people were more likely to have done so. In March, 18% of working Americans aged 18 to 29 said ChatGPT had helped them with work tasks, compared to 13% of 30- to 49-year-olds. But in August, Pew Research published some updated figures based on a July survey of 5,000 US adults. It found that 30- to 49-year-olds had caught up — and were about equally likely as 18- to 29-year-olds to have used ChatGPT on the job.

Given many more millennials — born between 1981 and 1996 — are of working age than Gen Zers — born 1997 to 2012 — it seems likely that more millennials are now using ChatGPT for work tasks.

In the July survey, upper-income respondents and those with a college or postgraduate degree were more likely to have used ChatGPT at work. 17% of college graduates said they had done so, compared to 6% of workers with a high school diploma or less.

In the initial March survey, men were slightly more likely than women — 13% to 12% — to have used ChatGPT at work. 25% of Asian workers said they'd used it, the most of any race surveyed. The report accompanying the July survey did not provide updated data for these figures.

The typical worker using ChatGPT is using it for writing tasks

AI tools like ChatGPT can provide false information. But some workers have found them to be helpful, particularly with writing tasks.

An MIT study released in July found that when workers had access to ChatGPT, the time it took for them to complete a series of work-related writing tasks decreased by 40%, and the quality of their output rose by 18%.

James Crisp, a 39-year-old New Jersey realtor, previously told Insider that he uses ChatGPT daily, and that it's an "essential part" of his business.

"I use ChatGPT to write marketing copy, real estate listings, social media content, build educational topics for my team and so many other things," he said, adding that, "I take what the AI gives me and make small tweaks to make it my own."

Tricia LaRue, a Missouri-based marketing professional who runs her own digital marketing agency, previously told Insider she uses ChatGPT every day to help write proposals, video scripts, and press releases.

"It's helped to increase my efficiency and speed immensely," she said.

The typical worker using ChatGPT is doing so in secret

A survey of over 11,000 workers conducted by the professional networking app Fishbowl in January found that, among those who had used AI tools to accomplish work tasks, 68% of them hadn't told their bosses they were doing so.

In a July Reuters/Ipsos poll of over 2,600 US adults, 28% of respondents said they regularly used ChatGPT at work, but only 22% said their employers explicitly permitted the chatbot's use.

In the subsequent months, it's likely that many workers using ChatGPT have been forced to continue doing so at least partially in secret. That's because some companies have restricted employees' access to the chatbot, while many others have yet to issue comprehensive policies regarding the use of the technology.

In July and August, Deloitte asked 115 North American chief financial officers where their organizations were on their respective generative AI journeys. 42% said their companies were still experimenting with the technologies, and only 15% said their organizations had already incorporated generative AI into their business strategies.

10 percent of workers surveyed in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said their companies had explicitly banned the use of external AI tools like ChatGPT. A quarter of workers said they weren't sure whether the use of these tools was permitted.

The typical worker using ChatGPT is a bit worried the tech could take their job someday

An August Gallup survey of over 1,000 US workers found that 22% of them were worried their jobs would become obsolete due to technology, up from 15% in 2021. The share of college graduates with these concerns rose considerably — from 8% in 2021 to 20% in 2023.

Even if they're not worried about ChatGPT completely taking their job, the typical ChatGPT user likely has at least some concerns about how it could impact their profession in the years to come. In March, Goldman Sachs said that generative AI could lead to "significant disruption" in the labor market and expose 300 million full-time jobs across the globe — many of them white-collar roles — to automation.

Nearly half of employees are worried that they don't know enough about AI, according to a LinkedIn survey of 30,000 employees across the globe, conducted in August.

While the AI boom could help some workers become more productive, spend less time on boring tasks, earn higher wages, and even have a four-day workweek, others could face more competition, earn lower wages, or even see these technologies replace their jobs.