Harvard Business Review's Top 10 AI Uses Puts Therapy and Companionship at the No. 1 Spot

A dramatic shift has occurred in how people use generative AI, with personal well-being applications now dominating technical uses – therapy and companionship ranks first on the list, according to Harvard Business Review's "The 2025 Top-100 Gen AI Use Case Report" published in April 2025, surpassing life organization and finding purpose as the most common AI applications.

Based on user feedback from Reddit and other online forums, Marc Zao-Sanders' analysis reveals the top 10 generative AI use cases, showing that personal well-being now dominates over previous technical and productivity-focused applications. One user stated that therapy and companionship rank first, with AI providing emotional support and guidance: I talk to it daily. It helps me with my brain injury daily struggles. It's helping me work through family shame, brain fog, inability to focus, and reminding me of what I have accomplished as I don't have any memory. Life organisation ranks second and finding purpose third, indicating a deeper, more existential shift in AI usage patterns.

The top 10 most popular use cases also include enhancing learning (4th), generating code (5th), generating ideas (6th), fun and nonsense (7th), improving code (8th), creativity (9th), and healthier living (10th). The report's author notes this shift indicates "GenAI is not merely a tool for efficiency but is increasingly becoming an integral part of human decision-making, creativity, and emotional support." Interestingly, marketing-related applications rank much lower – ad/marketing copy ranks 64th, writing blog posts 97th, and social media content 98- 99th, suggesting marketers haven't fully capitalised on generative AI's potential.

Sources:

1.

HBR’s Top 10 Uses Of AI Puts Therapy And Companionship At The No. 1 Spot

Harvard Business Review announced its latest top 10 uses of generative AI. At No. 1 is therapy/companionship. Here’s an AI insider look at all of the top 10 and why they are so popular.

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2.

How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025

Last year, HBR published a piece on how people are using gen AI. Much has happened over the past 12 months. We now have Custom GPTs—AI tailored for narrower sets of requirements. New kids are on the block, such as DeepSeek and Grok, providing more competition and choice. Millions of ears pricked up as Google debuted their podcast generator, NotebookLM. OpenAI launched many new models (now along with the promise to consolidate them all into one unified interface). Chain-of-thought reasoning, whereby AI sacrifices speed for depth and better answers, came into play. Voice commands now enable more and different interactions, for example, to allow us to use gen AI while driving. And costs have substantially reduced with access broadened over the past twelve hectic months. With all of these changes, we’ve decided to do an updated version of the article based on data from the past year. Here’s what the data shows about how people are using gen AI now.

Harvard Business ReviewMarc Zao-Sanders

3.

Top Gen AI Use Cases Revealed: Marketing Tasks Rank Low

A study on generative AI use cases shows that marketing is behind personal applications such as therapy and organization.

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