Information Shock Evidence

— of American adults now use AI chatbots, and across six countries surveyed by the Reuters Institute — of people use generative AI each week to get information. Few go on to the documents behind the answers. When Google showed an AI summary, people clicked a source cited in it on — of visits.

— findings from — source organizations · last finding added — · R. David Lankes, School of Computing, The University of Texas at Austin · data updated — ·

—of US adults use AI chatbots
—use generative AI weekly to get information, six-country average
—of US Google searches end without a click to any site
—of visits with an AI summary led to a click on a source it cited
—of US teens have used an AI companion
—of AI assistant answers to news questions had a significant problem

Most recently added findings

The weekly search adds new results here first. Each one is also filed under its theme and in All findings.

How to read these numbers

Each figure is one finding from one study, with its own population, wording and date. Figures in the same chart share a source or a close definition. Figures in different charts usually do not, so a 40% here and a 40% there may measure different things. Every value on the page links to its source. Click any bar, tile or row to see its full record: exact wording, population, sample, method and related figures in the same series.

Methods differ in kind. Telemetry and browsing panels record behavior. Surveys record what people say. Audits test what the systems say. Company user counts are announced by the companies at moments of their choosing and are labeled as such.

Lighter bars and grey values mark figures confirmed only through press coverage of a study, where the primary document could not be opened. Forty headline figures were checked a second time against their primary sources; one was corrected.

AI disclosure. This collection was compiled with Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. Claude searched for the studies, extracted each figure, checked it against its source and built this dashboard, working under the direction of R. David Lankes, who chose the scope and framing and is responsible for what appears here. A scheduled Claude task looks for new findings and corrections each week. Errors are possible, so please cite the original source linked from each figure rather than this page.