Epoch AI launches a ChatGPT Usage Explorer based on metadata from 5,000 US users

What changed

Epoch AI launched its ChatGPT Usage Explorer on October 1 using metadata from history exports supplied by 5,000 US YouGov panelists. The dataset covers roughly 660,000 conversations and 8.3 million messages, with some histories reaching back to shortly after ChatGPT launched in November 2022. YouGov removed all message text before sharing the data, so the explorer analyzes metadata such as timestamps, character counts, models and tool use rather than conversation content. Epoch AI explicitly notes that participation is opt-in, unweighted and limited to people who still used ChatGPT in 2026, creating survivor-selection bias and limiting population-level generalization.