Artificial intelligence has become the buzziest of Adland’s and Big Tech’s shiny new objects.  

What do consumers think about all the fuss? 

Last month Dentsu did a survey of a thousand U.S. consumes (via Toluna) to find out. 

Most consumers (87%) say they have heard of AI. But that figure drops to 61% who claim to “somewhat understand” what generative AI is and how it works. 42% say they’re interested in the technology while only 27% say they have used generative AI tools.  

While close to 4 in 5 consumers are convinced generative AI is the future, less than 2 in 5 are excited about that future.  

For consumers, several of the most exciting applications enhance day-to-day life – helping with daily tasks (37%), improving accessibility for those with disabilities (36%), and automating repetitive tasks (33%).  

And they do get excited about AI’s potential to help researchers discover new innovations (36%) and advancing society (27%). 

Among the biggest concerns people have about AI are what impact it will have on jobs (45%), social bonds (39%) and personal privacy (35%). And 37% worry about unforeseen negative effects.  

Consumers value responsible use and transparency from brands, per the survey which found that 77% agree that brands should ensure that existing biases and systems of inequality are not propagated by the AI-based applications they leverage. And over 70% believe brands should disclose when they use AI across products, services, experiences, and content. 

61% of consumers support brands using generative AI to design products and services but less than half (42%) agreed that they would prefer brands that use AI to design products and services over ones that do not. Millennials are most likely to prefer brands using AI, with 60% agreeing. 

“AI will enable a plethora of use cases, even create new ones that we cannot imagine today,” Dentsu concludes. It cautions that marketers “should ground themselves by experimenting with known, well-defined use cases - for instance in the areas of multilingual support, customer service, and predictive analytics - without getting carried away by AI’s future potential.” At least for now.