Always On: The Rise of AI Chatbots

Welcome to Always On. Each week, we’ll dig into a brand or audience trend you need to know about, tapping into Morning Consult Intelligence, our always-on insights platform powered by 15,000 daily surveys across 40+ countries. That means thousands of brands, audience deep dives, and enough fresh data to make your spreadsheets jealous. Sign-up here to get this email sent to you directly every week.

Let me start this week’s edition by ensuring you that I’m a human, I promise. Some of you have even been on Zoom calls with me, so I have witnesses. But it’d be fair to wonder otherwise — the use of AI tools, particularly chatbots, has been skyrocketing. Take a look at daily usage of ChatGPT since Feb. 2023.

Around 8% of respondents in the general public were using ChatGPT daily in February 2023. Two years later, that’s doubled to 17%. We’ve seen similar growth at a similar magnitude when looking at usage in general, regardless of frequency.

ChatGPT is a newer brand, but it’s one we’ve been tracking since the very beginning of 2023. Our brand tracking leverages real-time consumer sentiment data to identify when a brand starts to gain significant traction. By surveying thousands of consumers with always-on survey collections, we can detect shifts in brand awareness, favorability, and purchasing consideration, allowing us to spot early (and continuous) signs of momentum. Get in touch here to see Intelligence in action if you don’t already have access.

We’re constantly adding new brands and behaviors to our tracking (for example, we added DeepSeek in late January). In May 2024, we started also asking our respondents how often they used AI chatbots. Since then, we’ve spoken to more than 42,000 respondents who indicate they use tools like this weekly or more.

Those weekly users are 24 points more likely to be men, are more likely to be on every social media platform and are far more politically active. Compared to the general population, they are also…

• 7 points more likely to be electric vehicle owners
• 9 points more likely to be earning more than $100k a year

Explore this audience in Morning Consult Intelligence here.

Let’s Learn More By Asking Morning Consult AI

Morning Consult’s AI Chat (which, I cannot emphasize enough, did not write this email) can quickly answer questions like what you see above. This tool draws on over 15,000 new proprietary interviews every single day — which means, unlike other chat bots that rely on outdated datasets, our AI Chat thrives on real-time, living data. This new tool is currently available to clients — inquire here if you want to learn more.

Brand Deep Dive

Along with ChatGPT, we’re tracking a range of emerging competitors, as well. Two of its competitors — Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini — made our Fastest Growing Brands list at the end of 2024. While trust in Copilot is higher than that of ChatGPT’s, none of these AI tools are growing nearly as fast as OpenAI’s.

We’ve shown this new feature off a few times, but in case you need a reminder: Scorecard allows you to compare multiple brand metrics across multiple brands or audiences. Want to see your brand’s key metrics? Get in touch here.