How consumers are using — and thinking about — AI right now
Gen. Z uses AI more than any other generation. They’re also seriously skeptical.
Hello hello! It’s Dan Frommer, back with The New Consumer (on Substack!). What’s on your mind?
Quick plug: It was fun to return to the This Is Taste podcast, speaking with Matt Rodbard about AI and the food business, the fast-casual restaurant slump, and more. Check it out!
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is increasingly part of everything, from digital interfaces to casual conversation. It’s still early, but as it develops, AI has the power to profoundly change many aspects of life.
How are consumers using AI today? And how do they think about it? This was a major topic in our latest Consumer Trends report with Coefficient Capital, which I presented last week in New York at the BRXND AI x Marketing conference.
Today I’m going to unpack key parts of our research, plus some great new data from OpenAI.
The big picture
AI is something almost everyone knows about, and many people — especially younger consumers — are already using on a regular basis.
Consumers are mostly using AI today for advice and guidance, writing, and research. There’s no single dominant use case for ChatGPT or other AI tools, but instead many different ones, highlighting their versatility.
AI tools aren’t the top resource for shopping and commerce recommendations, but they’re increasingly part of the picture, especially for younger consumers.
In the US, Gen. Z expresses less optimism and more negativity about AI than Millennials, who are the most positive generation in our survey. Older consumers are even more pessimistic.
It’s early, but AI awareness is already as mainstream as it gets
Almost all Americans (98%) have heard of AI, and the vast majority of those (93%) have heard of at least one modern AI tool, such as ChatGPT or Claude, according to our recent Consumer Trends survey of more than 3,000 US consumers, conducted in July by Toluna. For context, that’s higher than the portion of consumers who say they’re aware of TikTok or Doritos.
Perhaps the best snapshot of the rise of AI is this chart, based on new research published by OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT, the most popular AI chat tool — and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
In less than three years since ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022, it has already grown to around 800 million weekly active users globally, and the pace of adoption has accelerated over the past year. This is a spectacular adoption curve, representing around 10% of the global population.
ChatGPT will probably reach 1 billion weekly active users in early 2026, just over three years into its existence. For context, it took Facebook almost a decade to reach that level of popularity, and likely took Instagram eight to nine years.
(Note that these published figures only include users on consumer-grade ChatGPT plans, including Free, Plus, and Pro plans, and exclude users on plans for enterprise teams or education subscriptions. So the total number of active ChatGPT users is probably higher, though not by a giant amount.)
While ChatGPT’s growth and prominence is impressive, it’s still early — and the platform wars are just beginning.
Despite some mockery of Meta’s AI efforts and Google’s stumbling start, our Consumer Trends survey found impressively high consumer awareness of both Meta AI and Google Gemini. This matters because awareness is the first step toward adoption, and both companies are relentlessly pushing AI into apps that most people already use.