OpenAI says 250 million people talk to ChatGPT every week

Voice and dictation now account for roughly a fifth of ChatGPT's weekly audience, according to OpenAI's own figures OpenAI says 250 million people use ChatGPT by voice or dictation each week. That is a lot of people talking to software on purpose. Set against ChatGPT’s total weekly audience of 1.2 billion users as of late September 2026, the voice crowd works out to roughly one in five. The numbers behind the voice push The 250 million figure is a sharp step up from OpenAI’s last public voice benchmark. As of July 8, 2026, ChatGPT Voice and dictation features were drawing more than 150 million weekly users. That July milestone landed alongside the launch of GPT-Live, OpenAI’s newer voice models. GPT-Live made full-duplex voice the default for ChatGPT Voice. Full-duplex is a telecom term worth unpacking. It means both sides can talk and listen at the same time, the way a phone call works, rather than the walkie-talkie rhythm of “you speak, then I speak.” The use cases OpenAI has pointed to are the hands-free kind. Think commuting, where typing is either impractical or illegal, and language practice, where speaking out loud is the entire point. Dictation is the quieter half of the fi...