Marketers are understandably keen to understand how the rise of AI tools like Chat GPT are changing the way people search for information. We’ve been thinking through the planning and measurement implications for clients over the last few months and whilst reliable statistics and insights on this growing area can sometimes be hard to come by, we thought Ofcom’s ‘”Online Nation 2024” report out last week had some good nuggets that were worth sharing.
Here are 3 trends that particularly caught our eye.
1. Over 40% of UK adults have used AI in the past year
Ofcom found that 41% of UK internet users had used a generative AI tool in the past year. As may be expected, usage is greater for younger cohorts, with 78% of all 18-24 year olds having used AI, declining to 14% for those 65+.
Less expected perhaps is the quite large difference by gender; half of all men had used generative AI in the last year, compared to only 33% of women.
2. Chat GPT strongly leads the way in AI usage, especially amongst 25-34 year olds
With Chat GPT often treated as a synonym for generative AI (the Hoover or Biro of the sector), it’s no surprise that it leads the way in AI usage, with 33% of all internet users having used Chat GPT in the last 12 months. This means that 80% of all AI users will have used Chat GPT at some stage.
Other AI tools are catching up though; for example Google’s AI assistant Gemini, which was only launched in December 2023. Microsoft’s Co-Pilot is the second most popular AI tool, helped by integrations with other Microsoft products, most notably Bing.
Focusing just on Chat GPT usage, this is particularly high amongst 25-34 year olds, as the graph below demonstrates.
3. Finding information is AI’s most common use, but views on its reliability greatly vary
Finding information or content is the most popular reason to use generative AI, cited by 36% of users, followed by 30% just “exploring the technology”. More creative or functional reasons such as “creating images” (20%) or “coding” (10%) also feature, as shown below.
Our final main insight, however, is that despite AI’s most common utility being to find information or content, less than one in five (18%) of users said they were confident that the information provided by generative AI was reliable. A large majority were neutral in their confidence (61%), meaning that 21% did not trust the results.
And those aged 16-24 (21%) and 25-34 (23%) were more likely to be confident that the information provided was reliable, compared to older adults aged 45-54 (11%) and 55+ (12%).
AI is developing rapidly as a technology of course (and the data is from 3 months ago due to the time it takes to compile the report) but we assume this likely reflects the experiences of many so far: really useful tech, but still to be treated with caution in certain instances.
Sources: all data and graphs are taken from Ofcom’s Online Nation 2024 report.
