Daily Generative AI Use Hits 28% as ChatGPT and Claude Add Advanced Workflows

3 articles · Updated · The Washington Post · Nov 9

Daily generative AI use across six countries rose to 28% in 2026 from 16% in 2025, with weekly use climbing to 51% from 34% as chatbots move beyond simple Q&A.
Top recent uses were researching a topic at 24%, asking advice at 20% and answering factual questions at 18%, while OpenAI said writing made up only 21% of messages in a 1 million-message sample.
Advanced features now push users toward deeper workflows: Deep Research tools break tasks into multistep plans, search large source sets and produce cited reports, though source verification remains necessary.
Chatbots are also being used as a 'second brain' by linking notes, files and apps, saving persistent project context, and using meta-prompting to generate better instructions for text, image, video and audio tasks.
More ambitious uses include 'vibe coding,' troubleshooting, document analysis and AI agents; 14% of surveyed users said they used an agent in the past week, while 67% had not.