Almost a fifth of Australia’s population has already used generative AI systems at an astonishing take-up rate that even exceeds the initial growth of Netflix.

Speaking at the tech leaders’ conference at Pokolbin, Australian technology research firm Telsyte released survey results detailing the take-up of generative AI in Australia, along with insights into the public’s expectations of it at home and at work.

“We’re seeing that 5.5 million Australians as of June have used some sort of generative AI application,” said managing director Foad Fadaghi. “To put it in context, six months after Netflix was launched, it only had 2.5 million users,” he said.

As expected, OpenAI’s ChatGPT was the most popular of the generative AI apps, with a 71 percent take-up. Snapchat’s My AI was the second most popular at 15 percent, followed by Bing Chat which includes GPT-4 and image generation (12 percent), followed by Google Bard. 

Analysts are predicting this order could change in time. Microsoft Bing’s GPT4 version is more capable than the free version of ChatGPT, and there are some expectations that Google’s coming Gemini AI will be popular with a more sophisticated ability to analyse and generate not only text and images but also audio and video. It is expected to integrate with existing Google services.

Nevertheless existing large language models have gained popularity quickly in Australia. Mr Fadaghi said generative AI had overtake smart speakers in terms of household usage – 8.4 million Australians used a digital virtual assistant in 2022, in contrast, less than half (3.2 million) had used a smart speaker.

“Maybe we are underestimating where this might be going,” Mr Fadaghi said. “One of the bits of our research shows that there is a groundswell of demand in the consumer market for things that make their lives easier, where they don’t have to think about it. “

Source: Telsyte

Telsyte found that Australians were already interested in a large variety of AI-enhanced home and work applications in what was pent-up demand for technology applications.

When asked what aspect of life they wanted automated, 47 percent said help with finding sales or cheapest prices. Suggesting routes based on live traffic conditions came second (39%), followed by alerts of accidents, disasters, and disease outbreaks nearby (39%).

That was followed by home security, cybersecurity, and monitoring health. Then came finding nearby parking spots, identifying fake news and false information, help with comparing products and services, and organising to-do lists.

Mr Fadaghi said many people expected technology to deliver this capability already.

“We’re seeing the equalisation of people’s thinking about where technology’s going and what it can do for them,” he said.

People who used generative AI tools were even more committed to these applications.

He said it made sense for business to find out if their client base was more interested in generative AI applications and bring that into conversations if they wanted to get ahead of the curve.

Source: Telsyte

“That’s probably one of the key marketing messages that needs to be said.”

He said around a third of those polled wanted to use generative AI for work. The proposed leading use cases were language translation, brainstorming ideas, summarising long documents, desk research instead of using a search engine, and solving “tricky problems”.

“I think we’re in an environment where there is actually a groundswell of demand for AI, despite some of the hype that you see in the marketplace.”

These use cases could suggest people were concerned about AI taking their jobs, it also could show that people wanted to use AI as much as possible, he said.

“I think the biggest fear that people have is around timeframes of how quickly things are going to change. Consumers are seeing that, but what they’re not seeing is the rate of technological change that’s happening.”

Telsyte also is keen to track the technological march towards general intelligence, where AI is regarded as equivalent or better than human intelligence, along with robotic vehicles and robotic taxis that are going to be enabled by this technology, Mr Fadaghi said.

Chris Griffith attended the Tech Leaders’ conference at Pokolbin courtesy of MediaConnect.