According to PYMNTS.com, artificial intelligence has moved past being a high-tech novelty and is now a regular tool for 64% of consumers, with over six in ten using conversational AI in the past year. The adoption is primarily for personal or mixed personal-and-work tasks, not corporate mandates. Millennials are the heaviest users, with nearly one in five qualifying as “Power Users,” while Generation Z shows the lowest resistance, with over 80% having tried it. More than a third of Gen Z and Power Users now turn to a dedicated AI platform like ChatGPT first for personal tasks, showing massive month-over-month growth of 36% and 28%, respectively. Crucially, 44% of those using dedicated platforms fully replace their old methods, a rate double that of people who use AI summaries within search engines.
The Habit Divide Is Real
Here’s the thing: we’re not all moving at the same speed. The data paints a clear picture of a two-tier adoption curve. On one side, you have the Power Users and a big chunk of Gen Z. They’re not just asking ChatGPT a fun question. They’re starting their day with it—planning, learning, shopping. It’s becoming their default interface, the first place they go. That’s a huge shift in digital behavior. It means AI is starting to control discovery and influence. But on the other side, a lot of people are still just using the AI baked into Google or Bing. And for them, it’s mostly a complement. It hasn’t really changed their workflow. So we have this widening gap where one group’s daily life is actively being reconfigured, and the other’s is just… slightly enhanced.
Why Platform Matters
This is the killer insight. Where you access AI dictates how much it changes you. If you go to a native environment like ChatGPT or Claude, you’re in its world. You’re more likely to let it guide the whole process. But if you’re just getting an AI summary at the top of a Google search, you’re still in the old paradigm. You’re just getting to the traditional list of blue links a bit faster. The dedicated platform users are twice as likely to ditch their old methods entirely. That tells me the real behavioral change—the kind that disrupts entire industries—happens when AI is the destination, not just a feature along the way. So, which camp are you in?
The Payments Frontier
Now, the next logical step is money. If AI is guiding your shopping and decisions, it needs to close the loop with a transaction. And interestingly, the trust bridge for that might be the digital wallet. About a third of consumers, including some who are otherwise hesitant about AI, said they’d prefer to link a digital wallet to an AI platform for payments. They see wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay as secure, familiar middlemen. This is smart. It lets people engage with AI commerce without handing over their credit card details directly to a chatbot. Basically, the wallet becomes the trusted rail that makes the whole AI-guided journey seamless—from “find me a recipe” to “order the ingredients” without ever leaving the conversation.
What Comes Next?
The trajectory seems clear. As these younger, AI-native cohorts age and gain more spending power, their habits will solidify. The “AI-first” behavior for planning and discovery will naturally extend into more commercial activity. Brands and platforms are going to have to compete for attention inside these AI conversations, not just on search engine results pages. But the big question is about the holdouts. Will the infrastructure—things like trusted payment rails and more reliable outputs—pull the cautious users into deeper adoption? Or will we end up with a permanent chasm between Power Users and everyone else? The month-over-month growth numbers suggest the shift, when it happens, can be breathtakingly fast. We’re still in the early innings of this rebuild.
