Global – AI - Where do consumers think it’s helpful and where do they use it the most?
September 7th, 2022, Kineree Shah

Global – AI - Where do consumers think it’s helpful and where do they use it the most?

Every day, artificial intelligence advances dramatically. AlphaFold's predictions for around 200 million proteins were revealed by Google subsidiary DeepMind last year, providing a gold mine for scientists working on vaccinations and novel medications. Meanwhile, screenplays, and even video games can now be produced using language models like OpenAI's GTP-3.

We polled respondents in 18 different worldwide markets to get a sense of how they feel about using artificial intelligence and where they thought it would be more helpful than harmful. Globally, two out of five people say AI will be more beneficial than dangerous when it comes to streaming (39%), shopping (40%), healthcare technology (42%), and appliances (44%). A third of those surveyed said they expect the same for gaming (36%).

Opinions on the rest of the options we provided are more divided. For finance (32%), driving (35%), and education (38%), a third believe AI is more beneficial than detrimental. However, more than a quarter (26–28%) disagree. In general, about a fifth of global consumers (16-28%) believe that using AI is more harmful than helpful.

We also asked users what areas they often use AI services for. A third of customers worldwide cite face recognition (30%), voice assistants (30%) and media suggestions (28%), while nearly half say navigation (49%), making it the most popular application.

In China, about seven in 10 consumers use navigation (74%) and face recognition (69%), while more than half use voice assistants (51%). This is the most across all our markets. In comparison to APAC markets - China (29% and 27%), Indonesia (26% and 30%), Hong Kong (28% and 30%), and Singapore (30% and 28%) - customers in India and the UAE use chatbots (32% each) and media suggestions (39% and 36%) more frequently.

Almost half of consumers in Europe (47–60%) regularly use navigation services, except for Sweden (42%) and France (41%). When it comes to utilizing face recognition and voice assistants in Europe, Denmark (33%) and Italy (41%) are at the top respectively. Britons are the leaders for chatbots usage (23%) in the European market.

In the North American markets, consumers from Mexico use media suggestions (48%) more frequently than consumers from all other markets in the survey. About a quarter in Canada (23%) and the US (24%) use face recognition. Navigation service is most infrequently used in the US (38%).

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Methodology

YouGov RealTime Omnibus provides quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18 and over in 18 markets with sample sizes varying between 515 and 2082 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in July 2022. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov RealTime Omnibus.