Good morning. Three years into the generative AI revolution, researchers are creating a more vivid and detailed picture of how people use leading models.

New studies from OpenAI and Anthropic provide insights into their users. There are no major surprises here, but the results are fascinating nonetheless, given the nuance of the analysis and their hints about how usage may evolve.

The OpenAI study of consumer messages released today found that consumers use ChatGPT for "practical guidance," writing and "seeking information," which accounted for 78% of all messages studied. Coding and what OpenAI termed as "relationships and personal reflection," accounted for 4.2% and 1.9% respectively.

How they did it. OpenAI said it uniformly sampled approximately 1.1 million conversations, and then sampled one message within each conversation. It included messages from May 2024 to July 2025

Assessing value. OpenAI found that ChatGPT likely improves worker output by providing decision support, especially important “in knowledge-intensive jobs where better decision-making increases productivity.” Asking is relatively more common among educated users employed in highly paid, professional occupations.

The company said its findings were consistent with other research showing that AI agents can “serve either as co-workers that produce output or as co-pilots that give advice and improve the productivity of human problem-solving.”

Both types of queries grew rapidly during the 12-period study, but non-work-related messages grew faster. OpenAI said that in June 2024, 53% of messages were not related to work. That number climbed to 73% by June 2025, the company said.

Business on the horizon. Anthropic says businesses use its Claude AI for coding and administrative tasks, Bloomberg reports, citing a new study from the AI startup. Some 77% of company usage was dedicated to automation. Says Anthropic: “We find that API users are significantly more likely to automate tasks with Claude than consumers are, which suggests that major labor market implications could be on the horizon.”

Anthropic also found that users in higher-income countries were not only more likely to use Clause, but “more likely to seek collaboration rather than automation, and more likely to pursue a breadth of uses beyond coding.” It also reported that businesses were more likely than consumers to trust Clause with agency and autonomy.

How are you putting generative AI models to use? Use the links at the end of this email and let us know. We will put this question and more directly to members of the WSJ Technology Council, who gather today and tomorrow in New York for our fall summit. It will be a great conversation. Watch this space for our in-depth coverage.

Nvidia, the company essential for building for building state-of-the-art AI from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic, is now caught in the crossfire of the trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies. 

China’s antitrust regulator said Monday that preliminary investigations found that the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company violated the country’s anticompetition law. The State Administration for Market Regulation didn’t say whether it would punish the chip giant.

The move came as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s top negotiator, Vice Premier He Lifeng, held a second day of negotiations in Madrid around a range of topics, including tariffs and the future of TikTok, the Chinese-owned short-video app.

China's AI catchup efforts are centered in Hangzhou, a city of 13 million people that has spent decades cultivating entrepreneurship.  The Journal's Shen Lu and Hannah Miao credit the city's emergence as a mecca for tech talent to a number of factors, including supportive government policies, research universities, major tech companies such as Alibaba and NetEase and relatively low living costs compared with Beijing and Shanghai.

Taking a page from Meta and Google and the millions of small businesses supporting their ad platforms, media conglomerates like Comcast are developing AI  tools and self-service platforms to make streaming-TV ads more affordable, WSJ reports.

Farmers in the southern African country of Malawi are using a government-backed AI chatbot for advice, the Associated Press reports. The app, called Ulangizi, which means advisor in the country’s Chichewa language, was built by non-profit Opportunity International.

The Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut interest rates on Wednesday with weak jobs data cementing the case for at least a quarter percentage-point reduction. (WSJ)

Gold’s value has ballooned by 39% this year, putting it on track for a greater annual price jump than during the depths of the Covid pandemic or 2007-09 recession, according to Dow Jones Market Data. (WSJ)

The appliance maker Whirlpool is stirring up a new trade dispute, telling the Trump administration that its overseas competitors could be evading hefty tariff bills by undervaluing their imports. (WSJ)

Genre-busting HBO Max medical show “The Pitt,” won best drama series, causing an upset by beating “Severance,” Apple TV+’s corporate dystopia story. But Apple flexed with “The Studio,” which topped the Emmy field with 13 wins (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.