Turns out New Zealanders are massive users of AI per capita (we love a per capita!) and what we’re prompting might be a little surprising… but according to ChatGPT, we’re not using it properly and the potential is HUGE. Sceptical of it? We don’t blame you. Here’s the real stats:
Ok, so AI – what a loaded subject, from the AI chat that happens on panels and in think pieces and the stuff you can’t quite wrap your head around… techy. But, then there’s the version that happens at 6pm on a Tuesday night when you’re trying to work out what to do with half a cauliflower and a packet of mince.
New data released by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, suggests most of us are very much living in the second version (me, for sure). Alongside its own platform figures, the company commissioned independent research by Pureprofile, surveying 1,007 New Zealand adults about how they use ChatGPT at home and at work.
So, if you’ve ever wondered if your AI usage is like everyone else’s, here’s how Kiwis are actually embracing and using ChatGPT, specifically:
How much we are actually using it:
So, as it turns out, New Zealanders have been enthusiastic adopters, and the growth curve has skyrocketed:
- Almost 10 million messages are sent to ChatGPT every day in New Zealand
- We’re in the top 40 in the world for ChatGPT messages per capita (God, we love a per capita)
- We’re also in the top 35 in the world for agentic use, which is the more advanced end of all this
- There’s more than 1 billion weekly active users globally
- The three most common uses in New Zealand are writing and communication, how-to guidance, and education and learning.
The time it gives back
Here’s where things get interesting:
- 40% use ChatGPT daily for quick answers
- 45% say it saves them at least four hours a week.
I mean, if you think of four hours as most of a school holiday afternoon, or the gap between finishing work and starting dinner, reclaimed every seven days – that’s a whack of time.
Health and wellbeing
Anyone who has walked out of a 15-minute GP appointment and remembered their actual question in the car park will vibe with this:
- 55% have checked symptoms or health concerns before seeing a doctor
- 40% have checked safety information or details about medicines and treatments
- 1 in 10 rely on it daily for fitness and wellbeing.
The household ledger
Budgeting, feeding people and planning things are all jobs that arrive weekly whether or not you have the capacity for them – and ask we know, the mental load most often falls to the gals:
- 31% have created a budget or tracked their spending in the past year
- 33% use it to explore price ranges or plan cheaper travel
- 1 in 4 use it weekly for cooking
- 1 in 5 use it weekly to find places to go.
The Kiwi DIY streak
I honesty didn’t think about using ChatGPT in a household reno sense, but I’m in the minority, apparently!
- 51% have used it to troubleshoot an appliance
- 1 in 3 have previewed a renovation or a repair using image generation
- 35% have used it to compare tradie quotes and decide whether to hire someone at all.
At work
New Zealanders lean on it harder in their working lives than the global average – perhaps symptomatic of us being enthusiastic adopters:
- Work-related messages make up 36% of ChatGPT use here, against 30% globally
- 1 in 10 survey respondents use it daily to draft emails to their boss.
Following the game
Even the sport is being outsourced, which will either delight or appal the person you watch it with (but how good for when you want to seem veeery clued up on a niche sport your partner is watching!):
- 31% have asked ChatGPT questions ahead of a major sporting event in the past year
- 1 in 10 rely on it daily for sport and news updates.
‘AI is my superpower’ – a former journalist turned Open AI comms ehad on her own AI usage
So, if you’re like me, you use tools such as ChatGPT as a kind of Google on steroids – I ask it what to make for dinner based on three manky ingredients, ask it if it thinks my puppy actually loves me and if it’s normal for him to sneeze (yes and yes, apparently) and when the next Warriors game will be. (If you haven’t yet read writer Monika Barton’s amazing piece on her own AI use, take this as your sign to do so!).
Like Mon, as a journalist I have an inherent distrust of generative AI (I like paying my mortgage), but I also can’t deny it has its uses, even in my professional life – transcription services, Canva, summarising legal docs, etc.
I know that turning a blind eye to it isn’t the answer – that’s how you get left behind and become this meme:
Which leads me to ask, are we not using it properly? Short answer, yes, according to Chloe Browne, OpenAI’s Head of Communications for New Zealand and Australia. As an example, she has a four-year-old and a seven-year-old at two different schools, which means two separate streams of newsletters, apps and notifications arriving at all hours and she says she’s making ChatGPT (of course) into her own little assistant.
“I find it so hard to remember library day, casual clothes day, when to order the tuck shop,” she says. “I’ve set up agents that basically surface to me, okay, right, it’s Monday, this needs to be packed in the bag, soccer practice on Tuesday. That has been so helpful for me as a busy mum juggling a big job with two small children.”
What she has built is essentially a domestic dashboard (mind blown, tell me more, I ask). She’s connected her personal Gmail to an agent, which reads the incoming school communications and pushes the relevant bits back to her: what to pack, which lunches to order, which field trip forms need signing.
“This is not superhuman, right? We’re doing this at work and in the office, and why not do it in our personal life?”
She’s, of course, describing mental load – the thing that exhausts women is rarely the individual task, it is the running background process of remembering that the task exists at all, and that is precisely the layer she has handed off.
From sheep shows to artificial intelligence
Chloe didn’t arrive in the AI industry from a technical background – she started out as a cadet on country newspapers in Australia, and the newsroom found her city credentials extremely funny.
“They thought it was really fun to take the girl from the city to cover tractor conventions and sheep shows,” she says with a laugh.
Telly followed, then six years in London newsrooms, then Airbnb, where she led communications across New Zealand and Australia, and then Canva, before the call came from OpenAI.
Having come out of journalism, she understands what the industry is facing and clear about where she lands on it – I ask her if Open AI supports creators who are still pumping out the content for AI to mine, all for a diminishing return (hi, it’s us!). “We absolutely believe in a world where AI and a healthy news ecosystem can coexist,” she says, pointing to the workshops OpenAI has been running for reporters and publishers. “When I was a cadet journalist, had I had access to something like ChatGPT, it would have been a game changer.”
So… not really? Do I think big tech companies should share profits with those whose content they use (because, of course, AI like this couldn’t exist without content to mine in the first place)? Absolutely. Is that achievable? Probably not. So what’s the future?
On being a bit scared of it
If you’re reading this having used ChatGPT like, four times and all of them in a manner indistinguishable from Google, you’re in extremely large and good company. Chloe’s view is that the hesitation is mostly unfamiliarity, and that’s fading.
“I think it is slowly dissipating as more people get their hands on these tools and they learn, and they experiment, and they realise that it’s actually like a super assistant in your pocket.”
She points to OpenAI Academy, the company’s free online training resource, and to the range of people in her own life using it. “Everyone from my 75-year-old mother to my sister to young people within the office jump on that, and you can really upskill yourself.”
The word that trips people, she reckons, is agents. “People get scared when they hear about agents.” In practice, building an ‘agent’ one requires no code and no technical team, just a plain-English description of what you want it to do – instead of agent, think of it like a virtual assistant, and hey, what woman DOESN’T need an assistant?
That accessibility is the part she is most excited about: “What I love about AI is that it can democratise everything. If you’re a mum with a side hustle and you’ve got a great business idea, you now don’t need thousands of dollars and an entire technical team to get a prototype off the ground.”
Which brings her to the gap in the data. New Zealanders have adopted these tools enthusiastically and shallowly, or as Chloe puts it, “the adoption is wide, but it’s quite shallow” – e.g., we’re barely scratching the surface of how we can use it to help our lives function better.
If you’re curious, Chloe’s advice is to start with something small – think of the thing that drives you mental regularly, and use AI to solve the problem by building an agent to help you achieve the task.
“Start with something really small, really monotonous, really mundane – that task every week that drives you absolutely nuts.” For her, it was remembering the school lunch orders. “Start there and then gradually do more, and what that can achieve, and how much time that can save you over the space of a week, a month, a year, is incredible.”
