TL;DR A Pew survey of 5,119 US adults finds 49% use AI chatbots but 40% say AI will hurt society, 67% distrust government regulation, and 59% distrust companies.
Half of American adults now use AI chatbots, but a plurality believe the technology will ultimately damage society, and overwhelming majorities have lost confidence that either the government or the companies building it will manage it responsibly. A new Pew Research Center report released Wednesday, based on a survey of 5,119 US adults conducted in February, found that 49% of respondents use AI chatbots, up from roughly a third in 2024. At the same time, 40% said AI will be worse for society, roughly two-thirds said it is advancing too quickly, and 71% agreed the technology will make their personal data less secure.
ChatGPT remains the dominant chatbot among US adults, with 44% of respondents reporting they have used the OpenAI application. Google’s Gemini ranked second at 24%, followed by Microsoft Copilot at 17%, MetaAI at 14%, Grok at 8%, Claude at 6%, and Character.ai at 3%. The most common use case was information searching, cited by 42% of chatbot users, followed by entertainment at 25%, creating or editing images and videos at 24%, and medical advice at 20%.
