But Kiwis are using AI and ChatGPT for more than work.

Thirteen per cent of Kiwis surveyed used the platform for fitness and wellbeing queries.

More than half (55%) of respondents said they had used ChatGPT to check symptoms or health concerns before seeing a doctor, with another 40% confirming they had used the platform to check details about medicines or treatments.

Gawesha Weeratunga, from OpenAI’s San Francisco-based economic research team, said the company worked with researchers to make its responses more reliable.

“We work with doctors and medical professionals around the world to create what we call evaluations, that basically test how good AI models are at responding to questions,” Weeratunga said.

“The opportunity here is that AI is infinitely patient; it can tailor advice to you, so it can get a detailed understanding of your life, your interests, and give you advice that is specific to you.”

One in 10 respondents said they relied on ChatGPT daily for sports and news updates, while a quarter used the platform weekly for help with cooking and recipe ideas.

Kiwis also used ChatGPT for budgeting advice, with 31% using the platform to track their spending over the past year.

OpenAI head of communications for NZ and Australia, Chloe Browne, said the research showed how ChatGPT had 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,” Browne said.

“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.”

Business adoption

The research also looked at how Kiwi businesses are using ChatGPT, with local firms ahead globally in adopting advanced capabilities such as agents.

Almost 50% of New Zealand ChatGPT enterprise output tokens were from agentic products such as ChatGPT Work and Codex, suggesting a shift towards more demanding workflows.

New Zealand ranked in the top 40 markets globally for per capita ChatGPT usage, and punches above its weight for per capita agentic AI adoption, ranking in the top 35 countries globally.

Kiwi start-ups are also utilising AI, with New Zealand ranked among the top 50 countries globally by active developers building on OpenAI’s API.

Weeratunga said the rising cost of tokens was a priority when he speaks to customers.

“There are two things that we are focused on. One is training models that are more efficient, increasingly efficient, that achieve higher performance per dollar. You’ll see that our new models Sol, Terra and Lunar are far more efficient than many of the competitors out there,” Weeratunga said.

“We’re also giving controls to businesses to better understand where the spend is going, which users in the organisation are spending the most tokens and on what use cases. That way you can calibrate access and token usage for the most valuable use cases.”

In New Zealand, ChatGPT power users generate eight times as many output tokens as typical users, despite having access to the same AI capabilities.

Among business customers, the top 10% of companies generate 14 times as many output tokens per worker as the typical business, indicating a large and growing gap in how organisations are using the same AI capabilities.

Weeratunga said the depth of usage 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.”

Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.