ChatGPT is the fastest-growing area of interest for professional learners, Udemy reports

Interest in the artificial intelligence chatbot has grown over 4,000% quarter-over-quarter since ChatGPT was released in November 2022.

ChatGPT skills are the hottest topic employees are researching in the United States today, according to the quarterly Global Workplace Learning Index from Udemy Business. The report is based on Udemy’s most popular courses on its business learning platform.

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No surprise: Artificial intelligence gaining interest in the United States

ChatGPT, Databricks (specifically the Databricks Data Engineer Certification) and Python (specifically the Certified Associate in Python) were the most commonly used courses among people from the United States who attended Udemy courses.

ChatGPT was also the most popular topic for learning globally, with consumption of courses related to it rising about 4,000% between Q4 2022 and Q1 2023. (ChatGPT was released to the public in November of 2022.)

Following ChatGPT, the tech skills topics, which have seen the most new interest in Q1, have been the data integration tool InfoSphere DataStage (706% growth) and the enterprise cloud solution Nutanix (590%). When it comes to non-technical professional skills, the global audience has shown growing interest in teaching (764%), Occupational Safety and Health Administration-related topics (195%) and the risk management test PMI-RMP (146%).

SEE: Employees may need more training before they can use AI effectively.

Global trends show wide variety, but AI rears its head here, too

The full report breaks down the data by geographical region. In Australia, professionals using Udemy are most interested in the CompTIA Network+ network connectivity certification, the AWS Data Analytics Certification and Azure Data Factory. Professional learners in the United Kingdom have boosted the popularity of classes on the Blazor web app builder, the Bootstrap CSS framework and SwiftUI.

Another interesting point is that consumption of learning modules related to AI Art Generation as a tech skill grew 239% quarter-over-quarter.

Two languages, Japanese and Italian, are present in the 10 fastest-growing non-technical professional skills.

In Canada, learners are interested in artificial intelligence, but it comes second to training on Microsoft Power Platform. The third most quickly growing topic of interest for Canadian learners is Microsoft Dynamics.

SEE: How one expert trains his team in the “cybersecurity equivalent of hand-to-hand combat.”

Different interests for different industries

Udemy categorized course interest data by industry:

• Manufacturing: Professionals tend to search for Microsoft Power Platform, with a 358% increase in interest.
• Government: Learners searching for the  Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) course increased its popularity by 280%.
• Financial services: The fastest-growing area of interest was courses on FastAPI.

How ChatGPT’s release is changing business

Udemy instructor Diego Davila notes that ChatGPT’s popularity has made a major impact on Udemy’s statistics this year.

“ChatGPT and generative AI are truly revolutionizing the way the world will work in the future as we’re just starting to uncover its use cases — in research, content creation, branding, marketing, productivity, e-commerce and so much more,” Davila said.

That includes professionals across industries.

“Having a comprehensive understanding of ChatGPT and other emerging AI technologies will be imperative to quickly pivot in today’s era of rapid digital transformation,” Davila said. “Whether you’re a business owner, engineer, marketer, content creator or learner, start by learning how AI prompt engineering tools can be leveraged in your role as well as how (and when) to get the best responses from it.”