44% of American adults now use ChatGPT. That’s up from 34% a year ago. It’s more than double what it was in 2023.
Hi I’m Jeff Payne. You’re listening to the Jeff Payne Show, Episode #26, ChatGPT Adoption Surges While User Trust Declines.
Here’s the part that should stop you: 63% of those same Americans think AI is moving too fast. 71% think it’s making their personal information less safe.
Rewind and play that again. The tool is spreading faster than trust in it is growing. And if you’re building a brand strategy for the AI era, that gap isn’t a warning sign. It’s the opening.
This comes from Pew Research’s newest survey — over five thousand U.S. adults, fielded earlier this year. About a quarter of Americans now use a chatbot daily. Search and work are the top use cases. And ChatGPT alone has gone from something one-in-five had tried to something nearly half the country uses.
At the same time, this same population is telling researchers, in the same survey, that they don’t trust where this is headed. Almost two-thirds say AI is advancing too quickly. Government confidence in its ability to regulate it is dropping. Confidence in companies building it responsibly isn’t much better.
So picture your buyer. They’re asking ChatGPT for a recommendation on the thing you sell. And somewhere in the back of their mind, they don’t fully trust the answer they’re about to get.
Kevin Indig at Growth Memo framed this well: adoption and trust are moving in opposite directions. Every quarter, more people show up inside the machine. Every quarter, more of them doubt it.
Most brands hear “people don’t trust AI” and think that’s a reason to deprioritize AI visibility. That’s backward.
When someone doesn’t fully trust the machine giving the answer, they lean harder on the one thing inside that answer they can verify — the source. The named brand. The citation. That’s not a footnote in an AI response. For a skeptical user, that’s the credibility the machine itself doesn’t have.
This is the Two Currencies idea I’ve talked about before, playing out in real time. Mentions get you found. But citations — the deep layer, the primary source getting named — are what get you believed. And the fewer people who trust the answer, the more that the named source matters.
The counter-argument is fair: most people don’t consciously clock which brand got cited in an AI answer today. True. But you’ve got forty-four percent of the country now living inside these tools, watching trust erode in real time. That’s a population that’s going to start reading more carefully, not less. The brands showing up as the credible name inside the answer now are building the habit before the audience catches up.
This is exactly why Burbank Dental Lab didn’t stop at a PDF. They had a set of static Success Guides driving real revenue — millions in it. But a PDF isn’t structured for an AI system to extract a claim, verify it, and return it to a user.
So we rebuilt it. Interactive 3D dental implant education, an embedded AI guide walking people through the actual clinical decisions — not marketing copy dressed up as education. Primary data, clear claims, a real point of view. That’s citation-ready structure. And it’s already picked up a confirmed backlink from a manufacturer in the space, verified independently.
That’s the pattern Indig’s data points to: the brand that shows up with structured, sourceable authority is the one that gets named when the user is skeptical and searching for something to believe.
Three things to do with this.
One. Pull your top twenty informational pages. Ask honestly: are the claims clear? Is there primary data behind them? Is there a named author or expert attached? If a page is just an aggregated opinion with no fingerprint on it, an AI system has no reason to cite it over ten other pages saying the same thing.
Two. Watch your branded search volume after you know you’ve been mentioned in an AI answer. Clicks won’t show you this. If someone reads your name inside a ChatGPT response and later searches your brand directly, that’s the citation landing — even if it never shows up in your normal traffic reports.
Three. Put your differentiated data and your actual point of view above the fold. Not below three paragraphs of throat-clearing. If the thing that makes you worth citing is buried, you’re asking both the algorithm and the skeptical human to work harder than they will.
So here’s the question worth sitting with. Right now, today — if someone asked ChatGPT the question your best page answers, would your name be the one it trusts enough to say out loud?
If you’re not sure, that’s not a content problem. That’s a proof problem. And it’s worth figuring out before 44% becomes 60%.
Thank you for listening. See you next time.
44% of American adults now use ChatGPT — up from 34% a year ago, more than double where adoption stood in 2023. At the same time, 63% say AI is advancing too quickly, and 71% think it’s making their personal information less secure.
Adoption and trust are moving in opposite directions. And if you’re building a brand strategy for the AI era, that gap isn’t a warning sign — it’s the opening.
Adoption is climbing. Trust is falling. Both are true at the same time.
whAT THE DATA ACTUALLY SHOWS
The numbers come from Pew Research’s newest survey of more than 5,000 U.S. adults. About a quarter of Americans now use a chatbot daily, mostly for search and work tasks. ChatGPT alone has gone from something one-in-five had tried to something nearly half the country uses regularly.
The same respondents, in the same survey, are telling researchers they don’t trust where this is headed — rising concern about the pace of AI development, and declining confidence that companies or regulators have it under control.
WHY THE TRUST GAP IS A BRAND OPPORTUNITY
Kevin Indig at Growth Memo framed it well: adoption and trust are moving in opposite directions, every quarter. Most brands hear “people don’t trust AI” and treat that as a reason to deprioritize AI visibility. That’s backward.
When someone doesn’t fully trust the machine giving the answer, they lean harder on the one thing inside that answer they can verify — the named source. That’s the credibility the machine itself doesn’t have.
Mentions get you found. Citations get you believed — and the fewer people trust the answer, the more that a named source matters.
The honest counter-argument: most people don’t consciously notice which brand got cited in an AI answer today. That’s true. But with 44% of the country now living inside these tools and watching trust erode in real time, that’s a population that’s going to start reading more carefully, not less.
PROOF: STRUCTURE BUILT TO BE CITED
Burbank Dental Lab had a set of static PDF Success Guides generating real revenue — millions in it. But a PDF isn’t structured for an AI system to extract a claim, verify it, and cite it back to a user. So the guides are becoming an interactive 3D dental implant education platform with an embedded AI guide: primary data, clear claims, and a real point of view. It’s already picked up a confirmed backlink from a manufacturer in the space, which has been independently verified.
That’s the pattern behind Indig’s data: the brand with structured, sourceable authority is the one that gets named when the user is skeptical and searching for something to believe.
Primary data and a real point of view — that’s what makes a page worth naming.
THE things to do
If a page has no fingerprint on it, AI has no reason to cite it over 10 others saying the same thing.
THe QUESTION WORTH SITTING WITH
Right now, today — if someone asked ChatGPT the question your best page answers, would your name be the one it trusts enough to say out loud? If you’re not sure, that’s not a content problem. That’s a proof problem. And it’s worth figuring out before 44% becomes 60%.
Source: Pew Research Center, “Americans and AI 2026” (June 17, 2026). Framing and analysis via Kevin Indig, Growth Memo.
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