AI disrupts marketing norms and changes so rapidly that it’s hard to keep up. Just last week, Google announced its newest push to incorporate AI in search with an AI mode, while Microsoft introduced the Agent Store, a catalog of AI agents. Companies may be tempted to move fast with AI pilots, but for consumer-facing AI experiences, brands can’t ignore consumer sentiment and readiness.
Key findings from our new report, Consumers’ Trust Of AI Is Low And Heavily Influenced By Their Privacy Personas, can help marketers understand how consumers feel about the AI hype:
Consumers’ trust in AI is low. In Forrester’s Consumer Benchmark Survey, 2024, only 23% of US online adults say they feel comfortable giving up personal information to generative AI tools, and 45% agree that genAI poses a serious threat to society. While the buzz around AI frames it as a new era of capabilities with boundless potential, consumers generally are not buying into the hype.
Consumers’ AI attitudes are heavily influenced by their privacy personas. Across the board, consumers are wary about sharing personal information with genAI, but attitudes vary highly. Forrester’s 2024 US Consumer Privacy Segmentation explains five different privacy personas, each with different levels of willingness to share personal information, tech savviness, and motivations to share personal information. The attitudes of these personas hold true for their attitudes on AI. Knowing the different personas’ AI preferences can help companies strategize on how to implement consumer-facing AI apps.
Apply the same data privacy best practices to your AI experiments. Don’t just follow the law; think about how to earn consumers’ buy-in, too. Remember, not all consumers are comfortable with AI and won’t necessarily appreciate your AI implementation. Be transparent, define the value proposition for consumers, and give users the resources they need to understand an AI tool and use it effectively.
For more insights, Forrester clients can check out our latest report, and don’t miss our related research on consumer-facing AI experiences. For a deeper dive, clients can schedule a guidance session.
