Only 25% of the Britons have used a generative AI tool, study shows

Although there has been much discussion about the way generative AI will change many aspects of how we work, the vast majority of the public has been relatively slow to adopt generative AI products into their own lives.

This is according to a recent study published this week (28 May) by Oxford University’s Reuters Institute which shows that just a quarter (25%) of the UK population has used a generative AI tool in their private lives – a figure which surprisingly falls to 20% for their professional life where many of the advantages it is said can be found.

Even fewer still use a generative AI tool as part of their day-to-day lives. Just 2% of the UK adults surveyed used ChatGPT on a daily basis with only 29% using it at least once on a monthly basis. For other generative AI tools, like Google Gemini or Microsoft Copilot, these numbers fall drastically to just 7% in both cases using it at least once on a monthly basis.

Name recognition for the large players in the AI space is much healthier with 58% of the UK population at least having heard of ChatGPT followed by a steeper drop off to 17% for Microsoft Copilot, Bing AI (also 17%) and Google Gemini (15%). Even here, though, there is a substantial 30% of the UK population that hasn’t heard of a single generative AI tool.

It is clear, too, that some popular generative AI tools, like photo creation tool Midjourney, which have a severe problem with brand recognition with just 8% of UK consumers able to recognise its name. X’s (formerly Twitter) Grok is even less known with just 4% of UK respondents having heard about it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is an age split in the users of generative AI, while 56% of respondents aged 18-24 had used ChatGPT at least once, this number fell to just 16% for those aged 55+.

‘It’s not a slam dunk’: How will AI impact segmentation and targeting?The study also surveyed another five countries – USA, Denmark, France, Argentina and Japan – and found that their people’s views on AI were broadly similar. Americans are the most likely to be using generative AI in both their private lives (35%) and working lives (28%) with the Japanese the least likely to be using it both privately (23%) and professionally (12%).

Americans were also considerably more likely to have heard of a wider spread of generative AI tools than other countries, in particular, Meta AI which has 27% name recognition in the States compared to just 12% in the UK.

As to what the public is using generative AI for there is a fairly even split between using it for getting information (24%) and for creating media (28%). Within that 11% are using generative AI to answer factual questions, 9% for generating ideas and just 5% for one of the more heralded uses of the tech in data analysis.

The benefits that generative AI will have on society, though, is a somewhat mixed picture. Over two-fifths (41%) of the UK population expect generative AI to make society much or somewhat worse, with only 22% expecting it to make society better.

The impact it will have on each individual’s life is much cloudier, with a combined 54% either uncertain or don’t believe that generative AI will have any impact on how they live their lives.

None of this means, of course, that generative AI will not have an impact on the marketing industry. It undoubtedly will. But it is worth bearing in mind that the public’s excitement around the adoption of generative AI tools is comparatively muted compared to the furore of excitement seen in boardrooms across the world.

Convincing the public that it’s worth embracing will be just one of marketing’s challenges when it comes to adopting generative AI.