AI seems to be everyone’s best friend these days, able to wear a million different hats simultaneously to achieve any task thrown its way. It can act as a chef and write you new recipes, a coach who can create you a personalized fitness plan, a therapist for your relationship problems, or, possibly best yet, your favorite unpaid intern who can complete those monotonous tasks that used to take you weeks in a mere number of seconds. In addition, every day, AI appears to become smarter and smarter. Only a few months ago, it was stumped by the question, “How many r’s are in strawberry?” Now, it can tell you not just how many r’s are in strawberry, but also able to tell you exactly why it got that question wrong in the past and how it’s evolved to fix those mistakes.

Views on the benefits of AI are varied, as are the promises when it comes to its effects. On the one hand, we are told that it will replace thousands of workers, yet that promise does not seem to be backed up by any hard data (so far). While profit-boosting does not seem to have arrived yet (outside of the AI companies themselves), the ability to create slop is undeniable. Thousands of applicants applying for jobs, many of whom may or may not be real people, seemingly endless social media posts that feel oddly similar, to a new level of phone calls and messages informing us of our pre-approval for loans, or issues that require us to immediately share our account information, the “benefits” are sometimes tough to find in all the clutter.

On the other hand, for those who use the various platforms, the power and potential gains in productivity are clear. The challenge is the speed of the benefits compared to the speed of the people using these tools for slop and other nefarious activities. When the latter is moving faster than the former, the benefits become cloudy at best. Add in the fact that many of the big players in the space are not exactly beloved institutions. As we shared earlier this month (link), the only big AI company (from the ones we tested) that has a positive brand affinity is Google. The lack of trust, along with the lack of perceived benefits, is not creating the most ideal landscape for these changes to take place.

Given the changes that have been happening, we thought it would be helpful to get a better understanding of how Americans are using this new technology. Similar to the overall view of AI, the ways Americans are using the technology are incredibly varied.

Frequency of Use

When asked how frequently Americans use AI for different tasks, just over a quarter (26%) report that they never use AI for work or for personal use, while 3 in 10 (30%) report that they use it every day for either work or personal use (or both). The biggest concentration is the 45% of Americans who use it, but not every day. Not surprisingly, age has a big effect on usage, as does ethnicity and gender. More than 2 out of 5 Gen Z Americans (42%) report that they use AI on a daily basis, as do 43% of Millennials. Gen X is decidedly lower when it comes to daily use (28%), while just 9% of Boomers report using AI daily.

Gen Z and Millennials are not at the full adoption level yet. 15% of Gen Z Americans never use AI at work or in their personal lives, while 17% of Millennials report the same behavior. Moving up the age scale, a quarter of Gen X do not use AI at all, as do 41% of Boomers.

Men are also much more likely to report regular use of AI compared to women. 2 out of 5 men (40%) say that they use AI on a daily basis, compared to just 19% of women. On the opposite end of the scale, 18% of men report never using AI, while 33% of women are in the same boat. This disparity between men and women exists in every generation, with the exception of Boomers, where women are slightly less likely to report never using AI (43% vs. 40%). When it comes to ethnicity, White Americans have a higher concentration of non-users (33%) than Black Americans (19%), Latino/Hispanic Americans (15%), or Asian Americans (9%).

Nearly half of Americans (49%) report that they never use AI for work, while less than 1 in 5 (17%) use it on a daily basis. The numbers on daily use change significantly based on the type of job that someone holds. Americans who work in an office setting are split between those who use AI daily for their job (44%) and those who use it less frequently (34%), while 22% never use AI for their job. Retail workers are the second most likely to report using AI for their work daily (28%), followed by healthcare workers (24%) and manufacturing/warehouse workers (24%). Retail workers are the most likely to report never using AI for their job (41%).

Using AI at work almost universally means that you use AI in your personal life as well. Among office workers who use AI at work daily, 3 out of 5 also use it daily for personal use, while just 2% say they never use it for personal use. The opposite is not quite true, with 47% of those who never use AI for work reporting that they use it in their personal lives.

Platforms Used

Among AI users, the vast majority use two or more different platforms. For daily users in an office setting, this is a near-universal behavior. Less than 1% of this cohort report just using one platform, while 75% say they use 3 or more platforms. The most common platforms used are Gemini and ChatGPT, while Grok is the least used platform. Among office workers who use AI daily, 58% use Claude, 79% use ChatGPT, 65% use Gemini, and 67% use CoPilot. Just 32% report using Grok, and 38% use Perplexity.