Pew Research's latest survey on US attitudes toward artificial intelligence found that 63% of Americans think AI is advancing too quickly, even as 49% now report using chatbots at least occasionally. Only 16% say AI will have a positive impact on society. The June 2026 poll captures a market where adoption is racing ahead of approval.
Chatbot usage has climbed sharply. In 2024, 33% of Americans said they used chatbots; that figure is now 49%, a 16-point jump in roughly two years. ChatGPT has driven much of the gain, with 44% of respondents saying they have used it — double the share that reported using it in 2023.
The generational pattern is the headline finding. Among Americans aged 18 to 29, 66% report using chatbots, the highest of any age group. But 48% of that same cohort believe AI will have a negative impact on society, and just 14% expect a positive one. Heavy use and deep skepticism coexist inside the same demographic.
Key facts
- 0163% of Americans think AI is advancing too quickly, per Pew Research's June 2026 survey.
- 02Chatbot use climbed to 49% of US adults, up from 33% in 2024, with ChatGPT usage doubling since 2023 to 44%.
- 03Only 16% of Americans say AI will have a positive impact on society; among 18-to-29-year-olds, just 14% do.
- 0434% of Americans aged 30 to 49 use chatbots at least once a day, the highest-frequency cohort.
- 0540% of Americans report using AI for work tasks; 30% say it makes them more productive.
Older Americans report using chatbots less frequently but hold less negative views overall. The trend runs counter to the usual technology-adoption story, in which younger users both embrace a tool and champion it. Here, the heaviest early adopters are also the loudest critics.
Frequency of use peaks slightly older. Among Americans aged 30 to 49, 34% say they turn to chatbots at least once a day. That is the highest daily-use share of any age bracket, and it tracks with work adoption: roughly four in ten Americans, or 40%, report using AI for work tasks.
On the productivity question, the picture is more mixed than the headline adoption numbers suggest. Pew found that 30% of Americans believe AI makes them more productive, and 28% say it helps them stay more informed. Both figures sit well below the share that actually uses the tools, meaning a meaningful slice of users are not convinced the technology delivers on its core pitch.
Concerns about accuracy continue to weigh on perception. In Pew's 2024 study, 66% of US adults said they were worried about AI spreading inaccurate information, and the new data suggests that concern has not eased as adoption has spread. Hallucination remains the issue voters return to when asked why they distrust the technology.
Pew's results echo a broader pattern visible across recent surveys. Earlier coverage of Pew's findings on this site noted that only 16% of Americans see AI as a net positive — the same figure that anchors today's release, and a number that has not moved despite a year of high-profile product launches from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
The gap between use and approval matters for the industry's commercial story. AI companies have spent the past two years arguing that consumer adoption will pull policy and culture along with it. Pew's data complicates that thesis: usage is rising on schedule, but the trust curve is flat, and the youngest, heaviest users are the most skeptical of where the technology is going.
Sample design and timing leave some questions open. Pew did not break out which chatbots respondents used beyond ChatGPT, and the survey was fielded before several major product releases later in 2026. Sentiment among daily users — the 34% in the 30-to-49 bracket — may shift as agentic features and on-device assistants reach scale.
For the AI industry, the Pew numbers reframe the next 12 months as a trust problem, not a distribution problem. Consumer reach is no longer the constraint when half the country is already using these products. The constraint is convincing the other half — and the skeptics inside the user base — that the outputs are accurate, the pace is manageable, and the upside is real. Until that 16% approval number moves, regulatory headwinds and enterprise procurement friction will keep compounding regardless of how many users sign up.
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