Generative AI will play a starring role in customer experiences

Image credit: Adobe Stock/ ipopba.

Over the past six months, Generative AI has emerged from research labs to become a disruptive force in creativity, redefining the way consumers, schools and businesses think of everything from image to text generation. Yet despite some early controversies and widely publicized mistakes, public sentiment regarding generative AI has been largely favorable — far from shying away from the technologies, individuals and brands are largely embracing them, a trend that appears highly likely to continue growing for the foreseeable future.

To understand generative AI’s growing footprint with consumers and businesses, Adobe surveyed 13,000 consumers and 4,250 customer experience and marketing professionals across 14 countries — the United States, United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia. Here are the highlights from our research:

Most people are bullish on generative AI in their lives as creators and consumers. A majority (57 percent) of all surveyed consumers believe generative AI will enhance their personal creativity, and the number rises as consumers get younger: 75 percent of Gen Z consumers say generative AI will make them more creative. And when it comes to their experiences with brands, 72 percent of global consumers say generative AI will improve their customer experiences, with eight out of ten millennial (80 percent) and Gen Z (83 percent) consumers expressing similar optimism.

Consumers want companies to use generative AI (responsibly!) to improve how they do business.

Brands need not be concerned about customer backlash when adopting generative AI technologies — as long as they do so responsibly. When we asked consumers what was most important to them when companies use generative AI, they prioritized a broad range of activities. Having “strong guardrails in place to ensure it is used ethically” came out on top, ranked first by 19 percent of consumers. Consumers also highly rated using generative AI to make products better (17 percent), making work easier and more efficient for their employees (15 percent), and using it to make their own customer experiences awesome (15 percent). And while 11 percent don’t want companies to use generative AI at all, that number sinks to only 6 percent for millennials and 3 percent for Gen Z consumers.

Generative AI will help boost efficiency and make customer experiences more personal. Marketing and customer experience leaders believe generative AI will help in a broad range of ways:

• 90 percent say it will help them do better work — 88 percent say it will help them do more work
• 89 percent say it will help them create more and better content
• 89 percent say it will help them reach the right customers
• 89 percent say it will help them better personalize customer experiences
• 88 percent say it will help them identify new customer journeys
• 88 percent say it will enhance their ability to use creative tools — 87 percent say it will enhance their creativity
• 88 percent say it will help them identify new audiences

GenAI will have a big role in content. While marketing and CX professionals see emerging GenAI tools as offering considerable potential, their top three expectations all involve content, with generating content faster ranking number one, while optimizing content and generating more content tied for #2.

Taken as a whole, these research findings suggest that generative AI has a bright future with both consumers and brands. Most customers and brand professionals are ready and excited to see generative AI improve products, services, and experiences — now it’s up to brands to harness this technology to deliver on both the possibilities and expectations.