The Age of Generative AI: Over half of Americans have used generative AI and most believe it will help them be more creative

“Adobe Firefly allows me to creatively explore in ways that wouldn’t otherwise be possible and is such a timesaver,” creator Tobi Shinobi, told us recently. Tobi is not alone in his sentiments. Generative AI has taken the world by storm over the last year, enabling millions of people to bring their imagination to life in ways they never dreamed were possible — simply by inputting text prompts to tell their computer what they want to create. Since we first introduced Adobe Firefly last March, people across the world have responded by generating more than 6.5 billion images! They’ve expanded viral memes, seamlessly edited photographs to reach their creative vision, and brought imaginative new worlds and possibilities to life with Firefly.

New Adobe research found that more than half of all Americans have taken generative AI for a spin in the past year, and more than eight in ten anticipate it will help them be more creative. This is quite a development for a nascent technology few people were familiar with just a short time ago. Times, however, have changed and today virtually all Americans — across demographics — say they’re familiar with this tech.

For all the questions that have been asked about generative AI, Americans are generally enthusiastic about many of the potential answers. More than 80 percent believe it will make life easier and more than half believe it can help them learn a new skill in the next few years.

One area where generative AI is particularly appealing to the American public is e-commerce. Consumer expectations are changing fast, and Americans are excited about how generative AI can help them make price comparisons, shop and receive customer support. In fact, 41 percent of people expect brands to use generative AI in their customer experiences today. Meanwhile, over half of Americans think how brands are using this technology is helpful. In addition, consumers are optimistic about how brands might use generative AI in the future to create more exciting and creative experiences and make products and services cheaper.

Not only that, almost half of consumers surveyed are more inclined to shop with brands that use generative AI on their website and 58 percent believe generative AI has already improved their online shopping experience. There is evidence that brands using generative AI are seeing considerably higher traffic. New Adobe Analytics research finds that online traffic to retail sites jumped 304 percent year-over-year (YoY) and online traffic to travel sites jumped 553 percent YoY from generative AI tools, underscoring that consumers are leveraging conversational interfaces to support their shopping and travel experiences online.

Americans are experimenting with generative AI in new and meaningful ways to help them be more creative and make their lives easier. From shopping and making art, to accomplishing tasks in the workplace and school, generative AI is welcoming a new age of creativity, and can help enable more innovative use cases and digital experiences in the future.

Additional findings from the Age of Generative AI:

• Almost all Americans surveyed have heard of generative AI, and over half (53 percent) have used it.
• Consumers use generative AI most in their personal lives (81 percent), followed by work (30 percent) and school (17 percent).
• Of consumers that regularly use generative AI, almost half (41 percent) use it every day.
• Popular use cases for generative AI include research and brainstorming (64 percent), creating first drafts of written content (44 percent), creating visuals or presentations (36 percent), trying an alternative to search (32 percent), summarizing written text (31 percent), creating images or art (29 percent), and creating programming code (21 percent).
• Eighty-two percent of respondents believe generative AI will make life easier, with a similar amount (82 percent) saying they can be more creative in the future with generative AI. At the same time, 72 percent believe that generative AI — while powerful — will never match a human when it comes to creativity.
• In the next one to three years, respondents are excited about how it can help them learn a new skill (43 percent of respondents), make price comparison and shopping easier (36 percent), access better customer support from companies (33 percent), create social media content (18 percent), and coding (14 percent).
• Chatbots are the top generative AI-powered tool US consumers have used when interacting with a brand. Consumers are also interacting with brands using text prompting for auto-generated replies and image generation use cases, like trying on makeup or within interior design.
• Over 70 percent of respondents believe that using generative AI to produce images of them wearing a product can boost their confidence when making a purchase — Two-thirds (66 percent) of respondents want brands to utilize their purchase history or other data to make shopping experiences more relevant to their needs.
• Consumers are most excited about the potential of generative AI to help enable websites that automatically filter products based on consumers’ needs (40 percent of respondents), designing a custom product (37 percent), summarizing product reviews (37 percent), chatbot-based customer service (36 percent), and virtual personal shoppers to customize options (31 percent).
• Fifty-eight percent of respondents say that generative AI has already improved their online shopping experience. Around half (52 percent) of respondents say are likely to use generative AI tools to help with their purchase of clothing.
• Consumers believe that generative AI can help improve their experiences with faster and better customer service (65 percent), generate more personalized interactions based on their preferences (48 percent), make products and services cheaper (44 percent) and create more exciting and creative experiences (36 percent).
• In retail, most consumers find these generative AI possibilities appealing: being able to automatically filter products on a website based on consumers’ needs (90 percent), design a custom product (88 percent), summarize product reviews (90 percent), enable chatbot-based customer service (87 percent), and virtual personal shoppers to customize options (82 percent).
• In travel, nearly all consumers find the following applications for travel appealing: Receiving a comparison of pricing options for travel (93 percent), discovering the working hours for hotel services and restaurants (90 percent), and finding nearby parking, restaurants and pharmacies (90 percent).
• When booking a service online, the use of generative AI is considered most helpful for hotels (53 percent), flights (47 percent), a combination of travel options (42 percent), restaurants (42 percent), cars (37 percent), and excursions (35 percent).

Methodology

Adobe surveyed 3,000 consumers February 15-19, 2024, about their usage and consumption of generative AI.

Online traffic to Retail and Travel Sites is based on aggregated, anonymized Adobe Analytics data across major US retail and travel sites. Adobe Analytics is part of Adobe Experience Cloud, which over 85 percent of the top 100 internet retailers in the US* rely upon to deliver, measure and personalize shopping experiences online.

*Per the Digital Commerce 360 Top 500 report (2021).