From Search Engine to Life Advisor

According to Samuel Altman, the way people approach ChatGPT is deeply influenced by age and digital literacy. "A crude simplification, but older people use ChatGPT as a replacement for Google. People in their twenties and thirties treat it as a kind of life advisor. And university students? They use it as an operating system," Altman said at the AI Ascent event organized by Sequoia Capital.

These observations are not merely anecdotal. OpenAI stated in its 2025 education report that more than a third of Americans aged 18–24 actively use ChatGPT — more often than any other age group and more often than for any other purpose. Young users are thus creating an entirely new model of interaction with artificial intelligence: they don't approach it as a tool for one-off queries, but as a long-term digital partner.

Why University Students See ChatGPT as an "Operating System"

Altman emphasized that university students don't just query ChatGPT, but integrate it with their digital lives. "They have complex ways of setting it up, connecting it to their files, and using fairly sophisticated prompts that they've memorized or saved somewhere," the OpenAI CEO described.

A key factor here is ChatGPT's memory. Thanks to it, the model retains context from previous conversations and can "remember" details about the user's life — from relationships to work projects to health preferences. "It has full context on every person in their life and what they talked about," Altman added. This allows students to use ChatGPT as a central interface for planning, learning, coding, and organizing personal relationships.

The comparison to smartphones is telling. "It reminds me of when the smartphone came out. Every kid knew how to use it brilliantly right away. And older people needed three years to master the basics," Altman noted. According to him, this generational difference defines how quickly AI becomes an integral part of everyday life.

The Czech Republic Is No Exception: ChatGPT Dominates Czech Students Too

Although official Czech statistics on ChatGPT adoption are not as detailed as American ones, the trends here are very similar. ChatGPT is fully available in Czech — from written text to voice mode to the latest GPT-Realtime-2 voice models that OpenAI introduced in May 2026. Czech universities and secondary schools are recording a massive increase in the use of AI tools for studying, writing essays, exam preparation, and solving programming tasks.

For Czech users, ChatGPT is available in a free version (with limits) or in a paid ChatGPT Plus subscription for approximately $20 per month (around 450 CZK depending on the current exchange rate). Since May 2026, OpenAI has been gradually introducing ads into ChatGPT, which may affect the European market — including the Czech Republic. While ads are being introduced first in the USA, European countries, including the Czech Republic, will follow. Users should therefore expect the free version to be increasingly monetized.

When AI Advises on Love and Work: Where Are the Boundaries?

People use ChatGPT for literally everything — from relationship advice to business decisions to replacing therapy. Young users, according to Altman, even "won't make a life decision without first asking ChatGPT what they should do."

Experts are divided, however. A November 2023 study published in the journal Safety Science warns against using ChatGPT for safety information and expert decisions. Another MIT study labeled large language models as "inherently sociopathic," which makes trusting their advice difficult. On the other hand, other studies, such as one in Scientific American, show that for everyday advice, ChatGPT can even be useful and harmless.

For Czech users, it is crucial to realize that ChatGPT is not a licensed psychologist, lawyer, or doctor. In the EU, moreover, stricter rules apply to AI systems in sensitive areas, which were established under the AI Act. Although ChatGPT is not banned in the EU, using it for medical or legal advice carries risks for which the user is responsible.

What Does This Trend Mean for the Future?

Altman's observations suggest that we are living at a tipping point: the generation that grew up with AI doesn't use it as a tool, but as an environment. If this trend continues, we can expect young users to demand the same level of personalization and contextual memory from all technologies that ChatGPT offers.

For companies and developers, this means pressure to create "agentic" AI systems that not only answer queries but actively manage workflows — scheduling meetings, editing documents, analyzing data, and communicating with other applications. For society, it means a challenge: how to raise a new generation of digitally literate citizens who can use AI effectively without becoming dependent on its outputs.