The development and deployment of AI across industries has been one of the year’s defining stories, marked by soaring market valuations, rapid data-center buildouts and nonstop corporate experimentation. But there is a soft underbelly of the AI boom, a deep sense of unease about the employment effects of the technology and a lack of understanding of the benefits to the average consumer.
The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Flash Poll: Trust and Artificial Intelligence at a Crossroads, conducted across five nations (Brazil, China, Germany, UK, U.S.), released today, shows that trust in AI is at an inflection point. In fact, in the three developed markets surveyed, acceptance of AI is linked to trust, an average of a hundred-point swing in attitude from those who distrust and reject to those who trust and embrace the technology.
There are four significant trust divides for AI: Geography; Industry; Income; and Age.
Developing markets such as Brazil and China are much more enthusiastic about AI than respondents in Germany, the UK, and U.S. Three times as many Americans reject the growing use of AI (49%) as embrace it (17%) while the Chinese are the mirror image, with almost 5.5x as many embracing AI (54%) as rejecting the technology (10%).
