Chatbots Are 'Hyped' More Than They're Actually Used: Study

Artificial intelligence-powered chatbots like ChatGPT feel ubiquitous, but are they? Despite the hype—model updates, controversy, and weird applications galore—AI chatbots see less use than the public is led to believe. A new study reveals that most age groups neglect to leverage chatbots in their day-to-day lives and that a surprisingly large portion of the population has never heard of them. 
Performed by the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, the study examines chatbot-related opinions and usage among 12,217 people in Argentina, Denmark, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Researchers asked respondents to indicate their familiarity with, usage, and opinion of numerous AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, X’s Grok, and Snapchat’s My AI. Although ChatGPT was by far the most recognizable chatbot, with about 50% of respondents saying they’d heard of the tool, chatbots were unrecognizable to nearly a third of the sample population.
ChatGPT is also the most widely-used chatbot, with two to three times more usage than other chatbots across all six countries. Still, only 1% of respondents in Japan indicated that they “frequently” use chatbots. This figure rose to 2% in France and the UK, then 7% in the US. Most respondents said they used ChatGPT to retrieve information, create media, or simply play around with the chatbot’s capabilities. In all countries but Argentina, respondents tended to use chatbots in their personal lives more frequently than they did at work or school. 
With one in 14 adults—at most—using chatbots regularly, it’s clear that tools like ChatGPT don’t see as much use as “nearly two years of hype, policy conversations, and extensive media coverage” would have us believe, the researchers write. That said, the study did find that AI chatbots were most popular among people between 18 and 24 years of age. This demographic is presumably more likely to guide the long-term adoption and adaptation of AI technology than any other age group, both as consumers and developers. If they’re chatbot fans, the rest of the world might gradually become fans, too.
“There are many powerful interests at play around AI, and much hype—often positive salesmanship, but sometimes wildly pessimistic warnings about possible future risks that might even distract us from already present issues,” the team writes. “But there is also a fundamental question of whether and how the public at large will react to the development of this family of products. Will it be like blockchain, virtual reality, and Web3? All promoted with much bombast but little popular uptake so far. Or will it be more like the internet, search, and social media—hyped, yes, but also quickly becoming part of billions of people’s everyday media use.”
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