The State Of GenAI And Consumers For 2026

For technology leaders, the strategic question is no longer whether consumers will use genAI, but which parts of the customer journey should be designed around it. That shifts the conversation from experimentation to portfolio choice: invest in conversational discovery, AI-assisted self-service, and product experiences that can be understood by machines as well as people. The management issue is not “add AI” but decide where AI changes demand generation, support load, conversion, or retention enough to justify redesign.

This also creates a governance problem. If customers increasingly arrive through AI intermediaries, marketing, digital product, customer service, legal, and data teams need shared rules for content quality, brand voice, and approved claims. Without clear decision rights, organisations risk fragmented prompts, inconsistent responses, and a growing gap between what the business promises and what AI surfaces. A practical next question is: who owns the answer when an AI-generated interaction is wrong — the channel team, the model owner, or the business line?

The trade-off is speed versus control. Firms that move quickly can shape discovery and service patterns early, but they also inherit new exposure to misinformation, privacy issues, and reputational spillover from third-party models they do not control. That means AI strategy should include vendor review, monitoring, escalation paths, and content governance, not just model selection. Leaders should ask which customer journeys can tolerate automation and which still require human approval or intervention.

Another implication is operating model change. As AI becomes embedded in consumer software, demand signals may become less visible in traditional analytics. Teams will need better measurement of assisted journeys, zero-click discovery, and AI-influenced conversion. The next planning cycle should test whether current KPIs, budget ownership, and talent mix are still fit for purpose in a world where the interface is increasingly conversational and partially owned by external platforms.

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Over the past three years, ChatGPT was the catalyst for genAI adoption. It became the face of consumer genAI usage. It is still the most popular tool among genAI users, followed by Google’s Gemini and well ahead of Meta AI or Microsoft Copilot. Personal use cases currently trump professional ones.

GenAI Is Poised To Grow Much Faster Than Mobile

GenAI is seeing similar growth to the adoption of smartphones: Eight years after the first iPhone launched, 68% of US consumers noted that smartphones were their primary mobile phone. Three years after ChatGPT was introduced, 38% of US consumers say they’ve used genAI, and globally, among those who use genAI, 62% use it at least weekly and 24% use it daily.

Unlike smartphones, however, genAI usage is poised to grow much faster in the future. Why? GenAI has lower barriers to entry — it’s generally free to use, and its functions are embedded in software across devices. In 2026, Forrester expects, for example, AI glasses to kick-start the AI wearables race, with 10% of consumers trialing them.

It is likely that OpenAI will pass the 1 billion weekly user mark for ChatGPT in the coming months. While awareness of genAI is peaking, most consumers are not necessarily aware that they are using AI. Knowledge of AI will stagnate as AI becomes integrated into everyday apps and consumer attention shifts toward results rather than underlying mechanisms.

That’s always the case with disruptive technologies. It happened before with electricity. Do you ever think about the underlying technology when you switch on a light?

AI will start to become invisible, but how are consumers really using AI?

GenAI Represents A Paradigm Shift In How People Access Knowledge

AI is moving beyond a novel technology explored by early adopters to one where a critical mass of consumers see it as part of their everyday lives. Even if no one has cracked AI as a new UI yet, it will be infused in most hardware and services without consumers even knowing — enabling new and yet-unknown use cases. Consumers’ usage of genAI is evolving around five pillars:

• A majority of consumers use AI tools as the new “answer engine.” In all countries surveyed by Forrester, more than 50% of consumers already use genAI as a new way to find answers to their questions.
• More than 40% of global consumers use AI tools to draft or create content. Initially used at work and driven by text, use cases are progressively shifting to images, audio, and videos created by consumers.
• A growing number of consumers use AI tools to get advice or recommendations. Globally, more than 40% of consumers already report using genAI to get advice or recommendations, while about 20% use it to plan travel.
• A minority of consumers delegate tasks to AI agents. While agentic AI is emerging quickly, consumers have very limited options for AI agents that can act autonomously and execute complex tasks. This evolution from instruction to delegation takes time and will depend on how consumers’ deep-seated anxieties around trust, control, ethical integrity, and technical safeguards evolve.
• A niche but fast-emerging category of consumers use AI as a daily companion. While only 12% of US and UK online adults see genAI tools as “a friend/companion,” Forrester expects a massive surge of consumers using genAI as a companion in 2026 and beyond. In 2026, we expect 20% of Gen Zers and Gen Alphas to succumb to AI companions. In South Korea, 25% of teens spend an average of 2 hours and 45 minutes per day on the zeta chatbot!

What Are The Implications For Brands?

• Don’t just “optimize” content; think about AI as a new contextual user interface and embrace conversational marketing. The decrease in organic traffic due to large language models (LLMs) and the zero-click phenomenon varies drastically for brands. Of course, you want to make sure that your brand and products are more visible in LLMs and AI agents, so you need to optimize for AI discovery and holistic search, but you’ll also need to think about AI a new user interface that adapts to your client’s intent and real-time context. It implies designing new experiences for ChatGPT and the like, anticipating the evolution of your websites and apps, and, more importantly, translating what AI-powered conversations really mean to your customers.
• Prioritize responsible AI. As AI continues to make headlines, consumers will also continue to struggle with the negative effects of AI: Misinformation and privacy are among their many concerns. Brands must realize their ethical responsibility to their consumers and align AI systems to build stakeholder trust, create internal business alignment, and ensure that technical model alignment gets off to a good start.

To learn more, Forrester clients can access the full report, The State Of GenAI And Consumers For 2026. Schedule a conversation with me to go into the details of what it means for your brand: We can zoom into differences across countries, demographics, and much more.