ChatGPT launched in 2022 and rapidly rose to popularity all across the globe. Shortly after, it seemed that every other company tried to capitalize on the AI craze, and hundreds of different AI bots soon popped up in virtually every corner of the internet. Over the past 4 years, certain AI companies have experienced much more success than others, with a handful becoming household names.

At the same time, being a household name does not necessarily mean people like you. In fact, there are only two companies that are more heavily involved in AI and that enjoy positive brand ratings in our recently completed national survey. On average, Google and Apple came out on top as the clear winners, with Google at a score of 61.9 (out of 100) and Apple at 53.3. Meta (43.3), OpenAI (40.1), and SpaceX (39.7) made up the middle tier, with Anthropic (35.7) and xAI (34.3) ahead of Palantir (29.5) in the bottom tier.

As we can see in this week’s chart, the breakdown of the scores shows that the averages are not hiding much, outside of the much larger concentration of knowledge with the companies at the bottom of the scale. Google (55% favorable) and Apple (45% favorable) have the highest concentration of positive scores, while Meta, SpaceX, and OpenAI all have higher negative views than positive (aka being underwater).

Interestingly, there was very little variation in the views Americans hold when it comes to these companies, with the exception of gender and, to some extent, income and education.

Key Takeaways:

• 🍎🔍Google v Apple: Google and Apple dominate the brand rankings of these tech companies, and were the only two companies to have a higher favorable rating than unfavorable rating. Google has a net 30 brand rating (55% favorable versus 25% unfavorable), and Apple is running in a distant second place with a net 11 brand rating (45% favorable versus 34% unfavorable). In addition, these two companies had the smallest percentages overall in the “no opinion” category, with Google at 5% and Apple at 7%, which stands to reason, given that Google and Apple were already household names before the AI boom.

• ✖️❌✖️SpaceX and xAI: These two companies “merged” earlier this year in February, and are about to go public. Elon Musk, the majority owner of SpaceX, has proven to be a very controversial figure (to say the least), and this is certainly evident in Americans’ views of his companies. SpaceX has higher ratings than xAI, but both aren’t doing too well overall, with SpaceX only having a favorability of 25% and xAI at 18%. In terms of unfavorability, both companies have an average of 41%, and only about 12% fall into the middle category of neither favorable nor unfavorable.

• 🙈🙉🙊 Open AI, Anthropic, and Meta: These three companies had similar results to the Musk companies, all having relatively low favorability compared to their higher averages of unfavorability. Meta did the best out of the three, at 32% favorability. OpenAI and Anthropic are well behind with favorabilities of 25% and 17%, respectively. Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic all have around 40% unfavorability, with Anthropic having the lowest unfavorability at 36%. Anthropic had the highest “no opinion” of the three, likely due to the fact that they are likely better known by their product, Claude.

• 🤷🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️Palantir: Coming in last place for favorability is Palantir, with only 10% favorability. Interestingly, they also had one of the lower unfavorability averages, at 36%. Both of these statistics can be explained by their no opinion rating, which is at 44%, the highest of any company. While Palantir isn’t a very well-known company, it does have the lowest net Favorability score at -26.