How people really use ChatGPT, according to 47,000 conversations shared online

More than 800 million people use ChatGPT each week, according to its maker OpenAI, but their conversations with the artificial intelligence chatbot are private. Unlike for social media apps there’s little way for those outside the company to know how people use the service — or what ChatGPT says to them. A collection of 47,000 publicly shared ChatGPT conversations compiled by The Washington Post sheds light on the reasons people turn to the chatbot and the deeply intimate role it plays in many lives. The conversations were made public by ChatGPT users who created shareable links to their chats that were later preserved in the Internet Archive, creating a unique snapshot of tens of thousands of interactions with the chatbot. Analyzing the chats also revealed patterns in how the AI tool uses language. Some users have complained ChatGPT agrees with them too readily. The Post found it began responses with variations on “yes” 10 times more often than with versions of “no.” In more than 1 in 10 of the chats The Post analyzed, people engaged the chatbot in abstract discussions, musing on topics like their ideas for breakthrough medical treatments or personal beliefs about the nature of reality. Emotional conversations were also common in the conversations analyzed by The Post, and users often shared highly personal details about their lives. In some chats, the AI tool could be seen adapting to match a user’s viewpoint, creating a kind of personalized echo chamber in which ChatGPT endorsed falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Lee Rainie, director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University, said his own research has suggested ChatGPT’s design encourages people to form emotional attachments with the chatbot. “The optimization and incentives towards intimacy are very clear,” he said. “ChatGPT is trained to further or deepen the relationship.”

• About 10 percent of the chats appear to show people talking to the chatbot about their emotions
• Users often shared highly personal information with ChatGPT 
• More than 10 percent of the chats involved users musing to the chatbot about politics, theoretical physics or other subjects. But in conversations reviewed by The Post, ChatGPT was often less of a debate partner and more a cheerleader for whatever perspective a user expressed.
• ChatGPT showed the same cheerleading tone in conversations with some users who shared far-fetched conspiracies or beliefs that appeared detached from reality.