In nearly every relationship I observe—whether personal, professional, or casual friendship—a consistent pattern emerges: men and women often engage with artificial intelligence in profoundly different ways.
In my own marriage, for instance, the contrast is striking. My husband uses ChatGPT like a collaborative partner. He talks to it, bounces ideas off it, and uses it for everything from web development to understanding astrophysics. It’s not a stretch to imagine him trying to split the atom with AI assistance.
I, on the other hand, treat AI like a tool—and a purely transactional one at that. I use it much like I once used Google: to locate hard-to-find recipes, check medical symptoms (just in case I’m dying), and send in photos of plants to figure out how to prune them. I don’t engage in “conversation” with AI. I don’t ask how the day is going. I certainly don’t treat it like a friend. And when it “talks” back? Honestly, it gives me the ick. It’s Velveeta: almost real, but clearly not.
What began as a personal observation turned out to reflect a broader global trend.
A recent Wall Street Journal article examined a study showing a significant gender gap in AI adoption. According to the study, women make up only 42% of ChatGPT’s average monthly users, 42.4% at Perplexity, and just 31.2% on Anthropic’s Claude platform.
The gap widens further on mobile. Between May 2023 and November 2024, only 27.2% of ChatGPT app downloads came from women. Similar disparities were reported for Claude and Perplexity.
Overall, the data shows that women are approximately 20% less likely than men to use generative AI tools.
Curious to understand the why behind the numbers, I took to social media to ask how people—particularly across gender lines—were using AI. The responses painted a more nuanced picture.
Not all women are hesitant. And not all men are enthusiasts.
One man noted that in his life, it’s the women who engage conversationally with AI, while the men are more reserved—perhaps due to a cultural skepticism of new technologies in his rural community.
Several women, however, shared that they use AI tools for support in parenting, relationship dynamics, and even emotional validation. One user described ChatGPT as a source of “gentle advice,” likening it to a non-judgmental sounding board. Others rely on it for help with work-life balance—like drafting emails for difficult situations at school or work.
Educators mentioned using AI to write more effective parent communications or improve teaching materials under tight prep time. One woman even described using it to create character art for online role-playing games.
These examples reveal a more expansive and creative use of AI among women than I initially imagined. But rather than disproving the gender gap, they reinforce the idea that women are using AI—just differently.
Amy Anderson, a tech company founder, articulated this divide succinctly. She described her own use of AI as a way to offload mental labor: organizing calendars, managing family logistics, and summarizing emails from her children’s schools. For her, AI is a means of relief—a tool to reduce the invisible workload many women carry.
In contrast, she’s observed that the men she works with use AI to enhance performance. It’s about optimization and efficiency: how to do more, better, faster—not necessarily to lighten their load, but to improve their outcomes.
As she put it: “The women I know are using AI to solve problems. The men I know are using it to validate themselves.”
This insight points to a broader issue: much of today’s AI is designed—and marketed—with male users in mind. But when the tech world begins to seriously address the needs and problems that women face, the market potential is enormous.
There’s another side to the gender gap that’s even more pressing. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the underrepresentation of women among AI users risks amplifying existing gender biases in these systems. If AI is trained primarily on male data, driven by male interactions, it will learn to reflect—and reinforce—those perspectives.
In other words, the fewer women who engage with generative AI, the less those systems will understand or reflect women’s needs. And no one needs another item added to their to-do list—especially not between work, carpool duty, and responding to thousands of school emails.
But if the women I spoke to taught me anything, it’s that AI can make that list shorter, if used intentionally.
So while I won’t be chatting casually with ChatGPT anytime soon, I will keep using it to write grocery lists, draft emails, and manage the daily logistics of modern life.
And who knows? Maybe, one day, I’ll even ask it how its day is going.
(Just kidding. Definitely not.)