Can’t speak for everyone else but I almost exclusively use it for what you mentioned:
> when exploring new solutions and "unknown territory"
If it’s something I have no idea how to do I might describe the problem and just look at the code it spits out; not even copy pasting but just reading for a basic idea.
> how do you compare it with "regular search" via Google/Bing
Much worse if there’s a blog post or example in documentation that’s exactly what I’m looking for, but, if it’s something novel, much better.
An example:
Recently asked how I could convert pressure and temperature data to “skew T” coordinates for a meteorological plot. Not something easy to Google, and the answers the AI gave were slightly wrong, but it gave me a foot in the door.