Half of adult Americans use AI chatbots, with a quarter using them daily, according to new polling from Pew Research released Wednesday. That’s up from 33% of Americans who used AI chatbots in the summer of 2024. But a small minority, 16%, believe AI will have a positive impact on society. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the most popular chatbot in the U.S., with 44% of Americans reporting use of the AI tool. When Pew surveyed Americans last year, 34% said they used ChatGPT. The second-most popular chatbot is Google’s Gemini (24%), with other chatbots trailing: Microsoft Copilot (17%), Meta AI (14%), xAI’s Grok (8%), Anthropic’s Claude (6%), and Character.ai (3%). Fifty-one percent of U.S. adults say they don’t use AI chatbots at all, while 25 percent say they use them “several times a week or less.” Twenty-four percent of respondents say they use chatbots daily, including 8 percent who use them about once per day, 12 percent who use them several times per day, and 4 percent who use them “almost constantly,” according to Pew.
The use of AI chatbots depends largely on age. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 66% use AI, with the percentages getting lower among each older age group: 30- to 49-year-olds (61%), 50-to 64-year-olds (42%), and 65+ (23%). Pew notes that while younger Americans are using AI the most, they’re not viewing AI more positively. In fact, those aged 18-29 were the most skeptical, with 48% saying AI will have a negative impact on society over the next 20 years and 37% saying it will have a negative impact on them personally. Compare that with 30- to 49-year-olds, with 39% who say AI will have a negative impact on society over the next 20 years, and 30% who believe it will have a negative impact on them personally.
