What happened
OpenAI's report, published via its "OpenAI Signals" disclosure framework, covers about 100 countries including Japan from Q1 2025 to Q3 2026. In Japan, decision-making and problem-solving fell to 15.9% by Q3 2026, making creative thinking the top use.
Why it matters
The shift suggests Japanese users are moving from using ChatGPT to decide and solve problems toward using it to generate ideas, a change in how the tool fits into daily work.
WHO IT HITSThis matters for business teams in Japan that plan ChatGPT rollouts, since the tool's most common use there now appears to be creative thinking rather than decision support.
Summaries like this, every morning.
OpenAI published the findings as part of "OpenAI Signals," a disclosure framework meant to show how people use AI. The data comes from work-related messages in consumer ChatGPT, and OpenAI says enterprise plan messages and Codex usage are not included. Personal information was removed to protect privacy.
The country-level breakdown shows that ChatGPT use is not uniform. In the U.S. in Q3 2026, decision-making and problem-solving was the largest share, while Japan's top use had shifted to creative thinking. Worldwide, uses are becoming more spread out: the top 10 uses accounted for 56.0% in Q1 2025 and 51.1% in Q3 2026.
The survey also indicates ChatGPT is not used evenly across occupations. In the U.S., 39.6% of work use is for planning and decision-making, while workers in those roles make up 9.3% of the workforce. Workers in "other" categories such as driving account for 43.1% of the workforce, but only 2.4% of work use.
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