Trillions Searched, Worried Workers, AI Content Is King

Thinking Out Loud

Trillions served: Google's recent boast of 5 trillion annual searches is both a "flex" and intended salve for anxious stakeholders. The figure is designed to show the company is healthier than ever and hasn't been impacted by ChatGPT. The latter's user numbers (400B+) and "message" volume have been steadily growing. In December OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told the NYT DealBook Summit that "users send over 1 billion messages per day to ChatGPT." Google's nothing's wrong statement stands in contrast to a growing body of survey evidence (including ours) that suggests otherwise. Two quick examples: 27% of US respondents say they now use AI tools instead of search engines (Future plc, 12/24); and 32% of US adults under 40 use AI at least 50% of the time they do an internet search (Attest 1/25). We'll do a deeper dive on all these competing numbers shortly. But there's a very strange disconnect between the growing body of survey data and Google's search volume data that argues Google hasn't been affected by AI.

New AI phone: Perplexity announced a partnership with Deutsche Telekom to develop an "AI phone" for under $1K. The phone will come to market next year, initially in Europe, for Deutsche Telekom customers. It will feature agents capable of "taking action" (e.g., booking flights). The example shown in the Perplexity tweet is a local restaurant search. The Humane AI pin was a complete failure and the Rabbit AI device is not doing particularly well. By the same token, this phone could flop – or it could represent something really interesting and new, with the personal assistant as the primary UX. Apps could largely disappear into the background. Google is slowly moving in this direction with Android and, of course, Apple is struggling to make Siri more powerful and capable. But a really affordable (very important) and highly capable AI phone could shake things up and send the market in a new direction.

Voice search 2.0: Like so many technology trends, voice search was heavily hyped and didn't really materialize. Of course, people use dictation and speech-to-text on their phones all the time but it never really became a "thing," in the way that people expected. Now, however, the combination of generative AI, next-generation virtual assistants and very realistic sounding synthetic voices is quickly changing things. The way one interacts with ChatGPT advanced voice mode and other AI voice assistants, will make these tools preferred over typing for many use cases. Our consumer research has identified that one of the most appealing aspects of chatbots (as an alternative to search) is their conversational nature. Traditional text-based search is limited and far less engaging by comparison. The use cases for AI assistants and "companions" are far broader and more varied. And voice will be the primary engagement mode in many or most contexts.

News & Noteworthy

• Google announces upgraded AI Overviews, AI Mode.
• Perplexity's momentum may be stalling.
• Yext integrates Places Scout, announces Scout "presence analyst."
• Wix launches integration with print-on-demand provider Printful.
• Salesforce launches AgentExchange, an app store for AI agents.
• Microsoft believes that AI will help relieve physician burnout.
• One in three US kids is now using AI for learning.
• AI being used to mask "foreign" accents of Indian call center employees.
• AI could radically change wealth management and financial advice.

Survey: Workers Worried about AI

Many enterprises trying to implement AI bump up against employee ambivalence or even resistance. This is typically related to job insecurity. It's not irrational. We're seeing this play out now in Washington, DC with mass "DOGE" firings that then seek to replace many of these workers with AI. By the same token, Microsoft is explicitly pitching replacing people with AI to increase margins. Workers aren't crazy, yet their fear or ignorance may keep them from very real AI productivity gains. Our research has shown that the more experience people have with AI the less they fear it. That's consistent with findings from the Pew Research Center, which conducted a late 2024 survey of 5.2K US employees. Pew found only 16% of workers actively use AI today and only 9% use it daily or weekly. Our SMB and agency adoption numbers are significantly higher.

Younger, more educated and higher-income workers are more receptive to AI and more likely to use it in their jobs. Workers in certain industries are also more favorably disposed toward AI: tech, finance, banking, accounting, real estate, insurance, though these industries may see considerable AI disruption. Overall, Pew found that the majority of workers (52%) are worried about AI though half of survey respondents said their employer was neutral on AI use (but see Shadow AI). AI adopting workers reported meaningful efficiency and quality improvements.

Content Dominates AI Marketing Uses

Dialog has repeatedly explored the top marketing AI use cases for SMBs and agencies. For SMBs it's generally marketing, sales, research and customer support. For agencies, it's content creation, social media, SEO, client data analysis (varies by size). A new survey from MartechTribe (n=283 marketing professionals) reinforces many of our earlier findings. According to the MartechTribe data, the most widely adopted AI uses involve various flavors of content creation or data analysis:

• Copy ideation (50.7%) 
• Copy production (43.9%) 
• Content optimization and testing (28.6%) 
• Knowledge and documentation (22.5%) 
• Competitor research (21.4%) 

Interestingly, the survey found AI use in social media management was more limited than one might expect, with an emphasis on operations (e.g., scheduling) rather than community engagement. In sales there was also selective application around "lead scoring and customer segmentation" rather than sales automation. There are many AI sales automation vendors seeking to eliminate SDRs and other reps entirely. This suggests that may be a tough sell.

Interestingly, "obvious" uses have seen relatively lower adoption or more limited interest including brand safety monitoring, customer support, sales pipeline optimization and video ad creation.

Funny | Disturbing | Sad

• Google co-founder Brin advocates 60 hour workweek for AI leadership.
• Another embarrassing AI-generated ad for Coke.
• AI could "redirect labor income from workers to those controlling AI systems."
• Most people in therapy study liked ChatGPT responses vs. human therapist.
• AI "upleveling" content; but there's now more average content than before.

Dialog Research & Product Plan 2025

Join us on our first member call of 2025 to discuss our product plans and expanded research for this year, including our next two surveys in Q1: local business owner (SMB) survey wave 2 and our next consumer survey. As always, we'll be seeking your input into the survey questionnaire. That call is March 12 at 10 Pacific/12 Central/1 Eastern.

If you're not currently a member and would like to explore Dialog membership, contact us. In 2025 we will be limiting the number of new members.

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