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Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

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Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#501

Post by wavemode »

whyenot wrote: post #498
victor106 wrote: post #314

>No customer or user wakes up and says, ‘I hope I get to talk to a chat bot or an AI agent today This is so true. I led the implementation of an AI customer service agent and even though management thinks it’s a great success the metrics tell a totally different story. Our customers hated it. I haven’t seen anything in tech that is hated more. Before you think we did a bad job with our solution, I can tell you we wen…

But what if the difference is either talking to an AI now, and the chances are fair that it can resolve my problem vs. staying on the line for a real person, who may be better able to help me, but there is a 2 hours wait (not an exaggeration, Hawaiian Airlines made me wait this long). Suddenly the former doesn't look that bad?

That's a circular concern. The only reason there would be a 2-hour wait, would be because the company didn't hire as many customer support agents, precisely because they want people to use the automated systems instead.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#502

Post by Gigachad »

marcosdumay wrote: post #351
lacy_tinpot wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guarantee this is a generational split. The younger demographics will prefer the AI bot to talk to.

Yes, it's a generational split. People in their 60s or older get confused. People in their 40s or 50s tolerate it better. Younger people hate it with a passion and will hate anything that it touches.

The hate Gen Z has for AI products and companies is intense. And they will look at you like a lesser person for using any AI product.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#503

Post by dabinat »

Customers do not care how things work under the hood - they only care about how well the feature works for them. There is no good reason to communicate that you’re using AI, other than to impress VC types.

I actually think the word “AI” in a name undersells the feature. “Background Remover” sounds like a more robust tool than “AI Background Remover”.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#504

Post by ben_w »

whyenot wrote: post #498
victor106 wrote: post #314

>No customer or user wakes up and says, ‘I hope I get to talk to a chat bot or an AI agent today This is so true. I led the implementation of an AI customer service agent and even though management thinks it’s a great success the metrics tell a totally different story. Our customers hated it. I haven’t seen anything in tech that is hated more. Before you think we did a bad job with our solution, I can tell you we wen…

But what if the difference is either talking to an AI now, and the chances are fair that it can resolve my problem vs. staying on the line for a real person, who may be better able to help me, but there is a 2 hours wait (not an exaggeration, Hawaiian Airlines made me wait this long). Suddenly the former doesn't look that bad?

The possibility of being useful sometimes does not imply that putting a button to invoke an AI in every app is actually a good idea.

You reference a customer support line. OK, but would you make it so every use of Google Search starts off with a call to a customer support line before the search results?

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#505

Post by throw7 »

jeffbee wrote: post #442
throw7 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've regressed for a long time and there's no signal to consumers that "AI" is anything that "fixes" or brings back what was working. The example I always give is when google maps got speech recognition, I could ask it "Hey google, what's the E.T.A." and it would magically respond with how long till I arrive. Somewhere along the line it broke and for years now it doesn't work... the last time I tried my phone actu…

[flagged]

Just tried it. Still broken. Maps doesn't respond at all now. I get the beep that maps hears my "hey google", but that's it now.

> I see. So you intentionally broke the feature, now you complain about it being broken.

nope. that was a recent thing when they forced gemini on the phone. woke up one day hearing a different voice and then went searching how to disable that. maps has always been borked.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#506

Post by fwip »

aurareturn wrote: post #311
fwip wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These stats are from last year, but in 2025, two-thirds of adult Americans had never used ChatGPT: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/25/34-of-us-... Another stat I've heard, but can't cite at the moment, is that only 7% of Americans use ChatGPT daily - I think it is likely a bit older than 2025, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's closer to 10 or 20% now. Everybody lives in their own bubble, and…

That includes a 58% majority of adults under 30. has roughly doubled since summer 2023. There are old people who might never use it. That said, my 70 year old parents use it sometimes. My bubble is working adults, which is likely more represented by the 58% under 30 figure. However, this was a year ago. I'm guessing adoption has accelerated even more in a year. It wouldn't surprise me if it's 50% overall by now and 7…

Looks like you're wrong about 2026 as well: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-an...

It's still a minority of adults who use chatbots, let alone are daily users. It took me approximately 2 minutes to look this up.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#507

Post by lukan »

Balooga wrote: post #462
fckgw wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is is about management where they can't see how bad and half-baked these customer service agents are, but the customer can tell INSTANTLY they're AI and just not helpful in the slightest

They know, because in their personal capacity, they hate interacting with AI customer service agents from other companies. But their bonus depends on driving down costs in their company.

"They know, because in their personal capacity, they hate interacting with AI customer service agents from other companies."

I believe at a certain level, you have real assistants for that.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#508

Post by wavemode »

safety1st wrote: post #239
dbalatero wrote: post #5

I could be wrong, but it feels like one issue is that AI seems to cater more as a signal to venture capital and the internals of the tech industry in a lot of these products, while consumers just want to know "what is this product going to actually do for me," and care less about whether it is implemented with the buzzword du jour.

We launched an AI feature and there was immediate blowback in the form of negative feedback. We then rebranded it as "Advanced Search," kept the sparkle icon and everything, literally just a find-and-replace of instances of "AI" with "Advanced," pretty much. The negative feedback stopped. The very next day someone wrote in and said it was an incredible feature. Branding is wild. The modern media environment is wild.…

> But when you use the term at least with some people it activates the "Those bastards are coming for my job" light in their brain

I think even this view is missing the point.

My opinion is that most people are overcomplicating this whole issue. When people react negatively to the term "AI", it's simply because the vast majority of features branded "AI" in the vast majority of products, are pure garbage. Searching for some deeper cultural or psychological reason is a waste of time - let's just stop pushing garbage AI products, then maybe someday people's perception of the term will change.

Until then, just leave that word out of the marketing material. Nobody really cares how the product is implemented, just focus on what it does.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#509

Post by xiphias2 »

dbalatero wrote: post #5

I could be wrong, but it feels like one issue is that AI seems to cater more as a signal to venture capital and the internals of the tech industry in a lot of these products, while consumers just want to know "what is this product going to actually do for me," and care less about whether it is implemented with the buzzword du jour.

What's interesting is that all big LLM providers figured out that the revenue comes from coding as it can be trained with RL rewards.

It means that most people will never understand how fast the landscape is moving: non-coding and non-homework use cases didn't change that much since last year.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#510

Post by WorldMaker »

DANmode wrote: post #496
WorldMaker wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feeling rather flippant, but what's the difference in practice ? Can you point to an AOSP "brand" phone on a store shelf that is "de-Googled" out of the box? What is AOSP really for other than "open source washing" Google's ecosystem? Is it ever making standards that Google has to follow/comply with or is it always just the tail being wagged by the dog to make it look like the dog is happy about open source (but stil…

LineageOS, GrapheneOS et al base themselves upon this upstream project. A good one to familiarize yourself with, and support.

Again, let me know when you see a LineageOS or GrapheneOS phone for sale on a store shelf.

I am certainly familiar with these things. I just don't see them having a practical effect on the average consumer, just fellow HN commenting nerds. I think I have one friend in real life with GrapheneOS at the moment, and it is not an experience they would recommend to any other friend of mine.

I support such things in theory, sure, but in practice, especially in HN comments there seems to be a lot of forgiveness to the very locked in by Google Android ecosystem purely because these alternatives exist, ignoring the practical realities such as marketshare/mindshare/ease of use/ease of access.

I don't have any easy answers on how to fix AOSP because it seems to be a sociopolitical problem, not a technical one, and I am mostly just complaining without skin in that particular game because I can't find myself caring about Android politics, but when my less technical friends and family that prefer Android are upset at something Google does I don't have good answers because "do months of research into LineageOS or GrapheneOS, deal with most of your apps not working most of the time, and it getting harder to buy phones because you have to make sure that they are rootable" isn't a good answer. "Why don't you just switch to an Apple device?" is at least an easier answer.

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