ANN ARBOR, MI–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Americans have mixed opinions about artificial intelligence (AI), and many still don’t understand where it stands.
Consumers have spent the past decade becoming more distrustful of how social media platforms handle their data, and AI privacy scores suggest they are becoming more distrustful.
share
According to a new American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) survey of 2,711 U.S. adults, overall customer satisfaction across six measurement platforms: Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, and Perplexity is an ACSI score of 73 (on a scale of 0 to 100).®). This score places AI alongside energy utilities and below airlines, social media, and mortgage companies (industries typically not recognized for great customer experiences).
Google Gemini leads all platforms with 76, followed by Microsoft Copilot (74), Claude and ChatGPT (73 each), and Grok and Perplexity (both 71).
More than half (56%) of U.S. adults have no recent experience using an AI platform. Of the 44% who do, engagement is very high, with 52% using AI at least once a day and 25% using AI every few days.
what people are most worried about
While 21% have a “very positive” outlook on AI, another 21% are “very concerned about its consequences.” The majority (58%) are somewhere in between, forming a large group that still forms opinions.
This study shows that adoption is acting more like a threshold than a step increase. Consumers who pass this point tend to make AI a daily habit. Those that don’t are held back by the two factors that ACSI data identifies as the most powerful drivers of satisfaction: trust in functional reliability and data security.
43% of respondents cited reduced human interaction as their top concern, ahead of job losses for future generations (37%) and job risks for themselves (31%). For companies deploying AI in AI platforms and customer-facing contexts, this finding points to tensions that cannot be resolved through improved functionality alone. The very efficiency that makes AI useful is what makes a significant portion of consumers anxious.
“Consumers have spent the past decade being distrustful of how social media platforms handle their data, and the AI Privacy Score suggests that consumers continue to be even more suspicious,” said Forrest Morgeson, associate professor of marketing at Michigan State University and research director emeritus at ACSI. “Social media never completely lost users over privacy, but it also never fully gained trust. AI platforms are at the same inflection point, but the stakes are higher as people share prompts about work, health, and finances. The window to overcome that lack of trust is now.”
Generational differences will determine who uses AI and what it is used for
Baby boomers are the most cautious adopters, with 35% saying they are very concerned about the impact of AI, while just 6% view it very favorably. When baby boomers use AI, the use cases are not practical. Research and information gathering leads at 68%, the highest percentage of any generation in this category, and shopping and product comparisons (29%) rank much higher than younger users. Long-form writing (8%) and data analysis are much lower, consistent with a pattern of treating AI as a high-performance search engine rather than a work tool.
Gen Z is taking a broader approach. They use AI for email drafting (35%), long-form writing (39%), data analysis (27%), and gaming and entertainment (24%). Despite this engagement, Gen Z has the lowest satisfaction score of all generations at 69, while Millennials, Gen They are pushing AI further into the creative and analytical realms, where performance is still uneven and expectations there are not being met.
Grouped in this study, Millennials and Gen Overall adoption rates are highest among high-income groups, with 72% of respondents making more than $100,000 a year recently used AI, and 39% have a very favorable opinion. Still, concerns persist within the group about job losses, accuracy, and reduced human interaction.
Additional important findings:
-
The industries in which Americans see the most value in AI are also the industries in which they are most concerned, including technology (50% value, 27% concern), healthcare (34%, 29%), and finance (26%, 27%).
-
Paid users report significantly higher satisfaction and loyalty. Among premium subscribers, ChatGPT jumped to a score of 80, while Google Gemini reached 82.
-
The most commonly cited benefit of AI is improved access to information (39%), followed by time savings (29%) and increased work efficiency (29%). More accessible education (10%) and better health care (17%) lag behind, but represent meaningful long-term expectations.
-
AI use has a personal bias: 29% of active users say they use AI only for personal purposes, 8% only for work, and the majority say they use AI for both.
Download the full report and follow ACSI on LinkedIn. × in @theACSI.
The data and information in this release may not be used for advertising or other promotional purposes without the express prior written consent of ACSI LLC.
About ACSI
American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI)®) is a national economic indicator and leading provider of customer analytics products that help organizations build lasting customer relationships and prove ROI on experience investments. ACSI’s AI-enhanced platform provides intuitive dashboards and causal analysis that pinpoint the quality factors that best predict customer loyalty, retention, price tolerance, and financial performance. ACSI data has been shown to be strongly correlated with key microeconomic and macroeconomic indicators such as consumer spending, GDP growth, profits, and price-to-earnings ratios.
Founded in 1994 at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, ACSI measures customer satisfaction for more than 400 companies in more than 40 industries, including federal government services, based on approximately 200,000 interviews annually. For more information, please visit https://www.theacsi.org.
ACSI and its logo are registered trademarks of American Customer Satisfaction Index LLC.
