Only 16% of Americans see AI positively, yet half now use chatbots, Pew Research study reveals

Only 16 percent of Americans think AI will have a positive impact on society, a new study shows

Despite the fact that AI increasingly dominates our economy (it's hot IPO summer and we're all just along for the ride), most Americans are not particularly optimistic about the technology's long term impact on the country, a new study from Pew Research reveals. In fact, although a whole lot of Americans increasingly use AI in their daily lives, most of them have neutral to negative views about it, the research reveals. Only 16 percent of Americans think that AI's impact on society during the next 20 years will be positive, Pew says, while around 40 percent say that it will have a negative impact. A vast majority of people (67 percent) don't believe that the U.S. government will do anything to meaningfully regulate AI. A similarly skeptical cohort (59 percent) don't trust companies to develop it safely. Young people -- that is, those people under 30 -- are the ones with the most negative feelings about AI. Pew says that only 14 percent of this cohort believe the tech will have a positive impact on society. On top of all this, a vast majority of Americans -- nearly two thirds -- also think that AI's development is occurring too quickly. Despite all of the skepticism, a whole lot of Americans also report using AI in their daily lives on an increasingly regular basis. About a quarter of Americans say they use AI chatbots on a daily basis. Those who do are typically using the chatbots for research purposes or for work, Pew says. A vast majority of people using AI are using ChatGPT. Pew writes that 44 percent of U.S. adults now say they use OpenAI's chatbot, a figure that's more than doubled since 2023. The next most popular chatbot is Gemini (24 percent), followed by Copilot (17 percent) and MetaAI (14 percent), with Grok (8 percent), Claude (6 percent) and Character.ai (3 percent) lagging behind. There is a bit of a gender divide. While chatbot use is growing for both men and women, men still use AI more and are more enthusiastic about it, while women are more skeptical, Pew says. Men are more likely to say they use AI chatbots in their daily lives (27 percent vs 20 percent for men) and while equal shares of men and women report using ChatGPT, men more commonly report usage of other brands, such as Copilot and Grok. The report also highlights how AI is changing the ways Americans consume information. Six in ten survey respondents told Pew that they routinely read AI generated internet summaries (indeed, on Google, they're pretty much unavoidable). A much smaller number report using AI to get information on fitness and dieting. There are also still a whole lot of people -- about half of the country -- that say they do not use AI in their daily lives. The people who do not use AI tend to be older, while those under 50 are more likely to say that they use it. Nearly 75 percent of Americans aged 65 or older say that they never use AI chatbots. Those people who don't use chatbots say they don't because they're not interested in them, and add that they have no intention of using them in the future.

Americans Are Increasingly Skeptical of AI, but We're Using It More Than Ever

It's our ongoing conundrum: Many US adults believe AI will have a negative impact on society. We're increasingly skeptical of our governments' ability to rein in the tech's more dangerous tendencies. But we keep using AI at increasing rates. A new study from the Pew Research Center published on Wednesday puts this dilemma into numbers. About half of US adults (49%) use chatbots, with nearly a quarter reporting they use AI daily. That's up 16% from 2024, when just a third of US adults reported using some kind of artificial intelligence tool. The ways we're using AI are changing, too. Smart home devices and wearables, like smart watches and rings, are integrating AI into how they work. This gives us more everyday exposure to AI. About a third of US adults say they have a smart speaker, Pew found, and AI features are showing up in some US adults' smart doorbells (18%), robot vacuums (13%) and even smart thermostats (11%). But while we may use AI, we aren't blind to the risks it poses. More US adults believe AI will have a negative impact on society (40%), slightly up from a similar 2025 Pew report. That's compared to 31% who now believe AI will have an equally negative and positive impact. Only 16% say it will be positive. Part of this change from previous years is likely because the AI tools themselves have dramatically changed, too. AI-created images and videos were once easy to spot by their 11-fingered hands and glitches; now, they're practically indistinguishable from reality. AI slop is all over our social media feeds. Vibe coding tools are technologically eons beyond the simple chatbots that wowed us in 2022. As AI use grows, so do the opportunities for the tech to do harm. Nearly two-thirds of US adults (63%) believe AI is advancing too quickly, Pew found. In a recent Johns Hopkins University national survey, the majority of US adults said they want to be able to interact with other humans, not AI, in medical care (79%), legal proceedings (76%) and education (74%). Most (75%) want transparency when they're interacting with AI; nearly three-quarters of US adults want a ban on AI impersonating people's faces and voices. Historically, governments have stepped in to prevent some of these more drastic tech catastrophes. But the US government has been hesitant to pass any significant laws around AI. The only significant one is the Take It Down Act, which just went into effect this spring and lets people request AI-altered images of themselves be taken down from social media. Aside from a few sporadic state laws, AI companies are largely free to set their own rules. The Trump administration has said that bureaucratic regulations would slow down innovation and prevent the US from beating China in AI development. But recent advancements in AI capabilities have national security advisors proposing a new requirement that all new AI models must pass a government review before they're released to the general public. Anthropic, which had a very public fight with the Department of Defense over AI, pulled its most recent Fable 5 model after cybersecurity concerns prompted sudden restrictions by the government. We've seen what happens when AI companies fall short. Many families have sued OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT encouraged their children to harm themselves and ultimately die by suicide. Grok, Elon Musk's AI, made millions of sexualized AI images of women and children without their consent earlier this year, drawing international outrage, investigations and lawsuits. So perhaps it's not overly surprising that 67% of US adults have little to no confidence in the US government to effectively regulate AI, Pew found. That's slightly up from 2024. About 60% are not confident US companies will develop and use AI tools responsibly. (Only 17% of US adults have faith in the federal government in general, Pew found in 2025.) Republicans and Democrats have flip-flopped with each other when it comes to skepticism of federal AI regulation. In 2024, more Republicans than Democrats reported having little to no confidence in the US government to effectively regulate AI. Now, more Democrats are skeptical.

Two-thirds of Americans think AI is advancing too quickly

According to the latest Pew Research poll, 49 percent of Americans report using chatbots at least occasionally, but 63 percent think the tech is advancing too quickly. Overall, use of AI chatbots has increased dramatically since 2024, when only 33 percent reported using them. Specifically, ChatGPT's usage has doubled since 2023, with 44 percent of respondents saying they've used it. But opinions remain negative, with only 16 percent saying that AI will have a positive impact on society. Interestingly, it's the younger generations who both report using AI more and who are inclined to have a more pessimistic view. 66 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 report using chatbots, but 48 percent of the same age group believe AI will have a negative impact, and just 14 percent believe it will have a positive one. Progressively older generations report using chatbots less, but also have a less negative opinion of it. While the youngest respondents were most likely to have used AI at all, it's those in the age 30 to 49 bracket who use it most, with 34 percent saying they turn to chatbots once a day or more. This is potentially driven in part by the fact that roughly four in ten Americans reported using AI for work tasks. 30 percent of Americans think that AI makes them more productive, and 28 percent believe it helps them be more informed. Though, as we know, information served up by AI can be questionable (at best), and in Pew's 2024 study, 66 percent of US adults said they were concerned about AI spreading inaccurate information.