Yahoo News How Gen Z Is Driving the Adoption of Generative AI in the U.K.
The adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in the U.K. is driven by teenagers and children, according to a new study from media regulator Ofcom.
“Gen Z driving early adoption,” it says in the summary of the latest version of its annual Ofcom Online Nation 2023 report, published just after midnight London time on Tuesday. Generation Z is defined as people “born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s.”
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Especially the younger members of that group have been embracing AI. “Four in five (79 percent) online teenagers aged 13-17 now use Generative AI tools and services, with a significant minority of younger children aged 7-12 also adopting the technology (40 percent),” according to Ofcom. “Adult internet users aged 16 and above are, on average, comparatively more reluctant users of Generative AI (31 percent).”
Meanwhile, 69 percent of respondents said they have never used the technology. Of those, 24 percent “have no idea what it is,” the survey found.
Ofcom defines Generative AI broadly as “algorithms that can create new content, including text, images, video and code, in response to a prompt.” Services covered by the definition include ChatGPT, Snapchat My AI, Midjourney or Bing chat, and DALL-E.
Snapchat My AI, which became freely available to all Snap users in April, is the most popular Generative AI tool among children and teens in the U.K. Ofcom found that it is used by 51 percent of online 7–17-year-olds. “Online teenage girls are its most avid users (75 percent),” it highlighted.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT is the most widely used Generative AI service among internet users aged 16 and above, reaching 23 percent of that group. “Among online youngsters aged 7-17, boys are keener users of ChatGPT than girls (34 percent versus 14 percent),” the Ofcom study found.
Internet users aged 16 and older are “finding their way around this nascent technology,” Ofcom concluded. But how exactly do Brits use it?
“Most simply use Generative AI for fun (58 percent), a third use it for work (33 percent), while a quarter (25 percent) turn to it for help with their studies,” the report summary highlighted. “Chatting and exploring the capabilities of Generative AI are the most popular activities (48 percent), followed by finding information or content (36 percent) and seeking advice (22 percent). People are also using Generative AI for creative tasks, including devising text, for example, poetry or lyrics (20 percent), creating images (20 percent), making videos (9 percent) and audio (4 percent).”
That said, Ofcom also found that many in the U.K. are conscious of the potential risks of Generative AI, with 58 percent saying they are concerned about its future impact on society. “Interestingly, the most prolific users of Generative AI among this broader group – the online 16–24-year-olds – are also most likely to be worried about its societal implications (67 percent),” its report highlighted.
“Getting rapidly up to speed with new technology comes as second nature to Gen Z, and Generative AI is no exception. While children and teens are driving its early adoption, we’re also seeing older internet users exploring its capabilities, both for work and for leisure,” said Yih-Choung Teh, Ofcom’s group director, strategy and research.
“We also recognize that some people are concerned about what AI means for the future. As online safety regulator, we’re already working to build an in-depth understanding of the opportunities and risks of new and emerging technologies, so that innovation can thrive, while the safety of users is protected,” he added. “Some tech firms are developing and integrating tools which will fall into scope of the new Online Safety laws. So we’ll be looking at how these companies are proactively assessing the safety risks of their products and implementing effective mitigations to protect users from potential harms.”
Below is a look at some of the other key findings of the annual Ofcom study.
YouTube beats Facebook.
YouTube was visited by more U.K. online adults using smartphones, tablets or computers than Facebook, changing the usage rankings. “91 percent of online adults visited YouTube in May 2023, overtaking Facebook (90.7 percent) which saw its visitors fall by 1.4 million during the last year,” Ofcom said.
More than a fifth of children have a false social media age.
The study found that 22 percent of 8–17-year-olds with a social media profile on at least one of the platforms assessed for the survey have a false user age of 18 or over, “putting them at greater risk of encountering age-inappropriate, harmful content online,” according to the Ofcom report.
A third of people find harmful material in their feeds.
A whole 68 percent of adults reported that they had seen or experienced one or more potential forms of “online harms” in the previous four weeks. “Over a third (35 percent) of adults came into contact with their most recent harm when scrolling through their personalized feed or ‘for you’ page, whereby users are served up tailored content by the algorithm,” the Ofcom report highlighted. “A similar proportion of teenagers (71 percent) aged 13-17 said they had encountered one or more potential harms online in the past four weeks. The top three concerns among 13-17s are content depicting animal cruelty (67 percent), content promoting suicide (66 percent) and content promoting self-harm (61 percent). They had also experienced unwelcome friend or follow requests or messages (30 percent) and trolling (23 percent).”
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