OpenAI says Kiwis use ChatGPT to save hours weekly
Thu, 3rd Sep 2026 (Today)
OpenAI has published research on how New Zealanders use ChatGPT in daily life and at work. The survey found users report significant time savings.
Based on a survey of 1,007 New Zealanders, the research found people in the country send almost 10 million messages to ChatGPT each day. It found 40% of respondents use it daily for quick answers and explanations, while 45% said it saves them at least four hours a week.
That level of use extends well beyond office tasks. More than a third of New Zealand ChatGPT messages are work-related, at 36% - six percentage points above the global average.
In the workplace, writing and communication, how-to guidance, and education and learning were the top use categories. One in 10 respondents said they use ChatGPT every day when drafting emails to their boss.
Household tasks
The survey suggests many New Zealanders also use the tool for routine domestic decisions. A quarter said they turn to ChatGPT weekly for cooking and recipe ideas, while 21% use it each week to find restaurants, cafés and places to go.
Budgeting and travel also featured strongly. Nearly a third of respondents, or 31%, said they had used ChatGPT to create household budgets and track spending over the past year, while 33% used it to explore price ranges or cheaper travel options. Almost one in five, or 18%, said they had used it to build a full holiday itinerary.
Health and wellbeing emerged as another common use. The data showed 13% of those surveyed rely on ChatGPT daily for fitness and wellbeing, while 55% said they had used it to check symptoms or health concerns before seeing a doctor. Another 40% said they had used it to check details about medicines or treatments.
Sport and news were also part of the pattern. The survey found 21% had used ChatGPT over the past year for questions ahead of major sporting events, and 10% rely on it daily for sports and news updates.
Home maintenance and renovation were another area of activity. The survey found 29% had used image generation to preview a renovation or household fix over the past year, 51% had used it to troubleshoot an appliance, and 35% had used it to compare tradie quotes and decide whether to hire someone.
"This research shows ChatGPT has become part of everyday life for New Zealanders. From getting through work faster to managing household budgets, planning meals, checking sports scores or even tackling home renovations, it's helping Kiwis cut the friction out of the everyday. It's no surprise, given the pace of uptake here, that weekly active users in New Zealand have grown by more than 20% over the past year. That's having a big impact on productivity, with almost half of Kiwis surveyed saving more than four hours of work a week - equivalent to a full month each year," said Chloe Browne, Head of Communications for New Zealand & Australia at OpenAI.
Business use
OpenAI also used internal data to argue that New Zealand companies are adopting more advanced AI tools at a relatively high rate. Almost 50% of New Zealand ChatGPT enterprise output tokens came from agentic products, including ChatGPT Work and Codex.
New Zealand ranks in the top 40 markets globally for per capita ChatGPT use and in the top 35 countries for per capita adoption of agentic AI tools, according to OpenAI. The company also said the country is among the top 50 globally by active developers building on OpenAI's API.
Gawesha Weeratunga, from OpenAI's San Francisco-based Economic Research team, described the trend in business use.
"Kiwi companies are ahead of their peers when it comes to adopting more agentic AI tools. We're seeing an acceleration in organisations using agents to complete complex multistep tasks like automating market research and prototyping business ideas," said Gawesha Weeratunga of OpenAI's San Francisco-based Economic Research team.
One local example cited by OpenAI was brain health company Ārepa. The company said it uses ChatGPT across its research work as it develops a food ingredient based on a neuro-molecule derived from blackcurrant.
"Our discovery has the potential to redefine how natural ingredients support brain health," said Angus Brown, Co-Founder of Ārepa.
"We're now transforming that discovery into a food-grade ingredient, supported by human clinical research. ChatGPT helps our team analyse complex large datasets and move from scientific discovery to real-world application much faster," Brown said.
Usage gap
The data also pointed to a widening divide between heavy users and the rest. OpenAI said ChatGPT power users in New Zealand generate eight times as many output tokens as typical users, despite having access to the same tools.
Among business customers, the top 10% of companies generate 14 times as many output tokens per worker as the typical business, according to the data. OpenAI said this indicates a large gap in how companies apply the technology internally.
Weeratunga said the difference was less about access than how deeply organisations integrate the systems into work.
"Despite having access to the same capabilities, depth of usage is what differentiates firms. Agents need the context to understand the work, the tools to act, and the persistence to carry a task through to completion. For New Zealand businesses, that means connecting AI to relevant information and systems, setting clear permissions, and giving people the skills and time to learn how to use AI deeply," Weeratunga said.