Consumer Backlash Growing Over AI Products Due To Job Loss, Poor Quality

Multiple new research studies reveal a growing consumer backlash against the insertion of AI into a variety of products.

The primary complaints are that the use of AI is intrusive, threatens privacy - and all for a product which, to date, is of generally poor quality and which is increasingly perceived to be taking jobs from humans. While enterprises claim they are becoming more efficient, data suggest that consumers are not benefitting by receiving lower prices - and many feel that their livelihoods as well as those of loved ones and friends are threatened. While it is doubtful this will stop the AI surge - especially given the level of investment in it - there are more questions about the long term economic impact. JL

Heather Kelly reports in the Washington Post:

A recent study found that simply having the term “AI” in a product description was enough to turn off potential customers. In ongoing research, the biggest reason for consumers not wanting AI is concerns about people losing their jobs, followed by issues such as privacy and quality. In thousands of comments and posts across social media — including Reddit, YouTube, Threads and TikTok — people threatened to cancel subscriptions, voiced concern for human narrators, and said AI creates inferior experiences. “There will be companies that differentiate themselves by saying no to AI. People will be willing to pay more for things just made by humans.”

For 581 days in a row, artist Karen Crow dutifully opened language-learning app Duolingo and practiced her French. For the past decade, she used audiobook service Audible to listen to books while working and traveling.

 

But at the end of May, Crow canceled both subscriptions over the companies’ decisions to use more artificial intelligence. Language-learning app Duolingo said in April it was replacing some contractors with AI to more than double the number of language lessons it offers. Audiobook company Audible, which is owned by Amazon, said in May it was adding AI narration options that publishers could use to create audiobooks. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

“I’ve been very loyal and spent a lot of money” on these services, said Crow, 51. The Pittsburgh-based resident worries about AI’s negative impact on the environment and what happens to culture when creativity is taken over by automation. “If enough people leave, hopefully they kind of rethink this.”

 

Consumers and creative professionals such as Crow are voicing their discontent at the ways some companies are using more AI, especially when it replaces jobs typically handled by humans. In thousands of comments and posts about Audible and Duolingo that The Post reviewed across social media — including on Reddit, YouTube, Threads and TikTok — people threatened to cancel subscriptions, voiced concern for human translators and narrators, and said AI creates inferior experiences.

“It destroys the purpose of humanity. We have so many amazing abilities to create art and music and just appreciate what’s around us,” said Kayla Ellsworth, a 21-year-old college student. “Some of the things that are the most important to us are being replaced by things that are not real.”

Since ChatGPT launched at the end of 2022, AI chatbots have taken off in popularity, with people using them for brainstorming, internet searches, companionship and therapy. Many companies joined the rush and started to wedge AI into their existing products. Zoom offers AI summaries of conference calls, and Microsoft Office apps have AI around every corner, waiting to help write a letter or make a presentation. Behind the scenes, companies are using AI to take over more human tasks such as customer service work and coding.

 

While many AI tools are a hit, integration doesn’t always go smoothly when people feel the technology tries to take over human tasks. Education tech company Chegg received backlash after announcing it would use more AI, but at the same time it has lost customers to AI such as Google summaries and ChatGPT. Google pulled an Olympics ad that showed a girl using AI to help write a letter to her favorite athlete after backlash. In 2022, Google added AI narration options for audiobooks, followed by Apple’s digital narration feature in 2023. They were similarly met with pushback online but are smaller players in audiobooks compared with Audible.

“With Duolingo and Audible, you are choosing to use this. This is a personal pleasure you are paying for a product to get,” said Alice E. Marwick, director of research at Data & Society. “In both cases this feels like a sense of loss, that there is something about these products that was interesting or special that’s lost to AI.”

Duolingo built up an enthusiastic online following with irreverent videos starring its mascot, a green owl costume with a human inside. The Owl has posted thirst traps, held a funeral and hopped on every viral meme. After Duolingo’s AI announcement, its social media comments filled with upset fans, many of whom said AI was already creating nonsensical translations.

 

In a statement, Duolingo said that the company has always used AI and that it’s part of a goal to make its tools universally available.

“This isn’t about replacing people with AI. Our goal is to use AI to make Duolingo better, and to allow our talented people to focus on creative work and solving big problems. We’re hiring across all departments,” the company said.

People in creative jobs are already on edge about the role AI is playing in their fields. On sites such as Etsy, clearly AI-generated art and other products are pushing out some original crafters who make a living on their creations. AI is being used to write romance novels and coloring books, design logos and make presentations.

A group of high-profile authors is currently suing Meta, for example, over use of their work to train Llama, its open-source AI models. There are a number of ongoing lawsuits against AI companies for training their systems on text, data and images scraped from websites, writing and art without consent of authors, which the AI companies claim is fair use.

 

“I was promised tech would make everything easier so I could enjoy life,” author Brittany Moone said. “Now it’s leaving me all the dishes and the laundry so AI can make the art.”

Moone, whose first book — a supernatural tale set in San Francisco — is being published later this year, said she would much rather save up the money for a human narrator.

Audible emphasized that its AI tools could be used for titles that might not have the budget for an audio option, such as older books, independent publications and translations. It can cost thousands of dollars and take weeks to produce an audiobook with a human narrator. With AI, it will probably cost far less.

“These tools will give select publishers another option to create audiobooks that would otherwise not have been made. This is an “and” strategy to bring more titles to audio, complementing our continued investment in human narration, expanding listener choice and giving the works of more authors the wider audience they deserve,” an Audible spokesperson said in a statement.

 

Audiobook narrator Erin deWard said she suspects these use cases are just a first step for the industry and that it could come for narrator jobs in the future. She said there are things AI narration could never replicate, such as passion.

“For current AI, which sounds really good in terms of tone, reading a sex scene is hilarious,” deWard said. “Even if they were able to program an AI to be breathier, to ramp up the rhythm, it still is not going to be the same as a human narrator who has experienced a sexual encounter.”

Mesut Cicek, an assistant marketing professor at Washington State University, found in a recent study that simply having the term “AI” in a product description was enough to turn off potential customers. In his ongoing research, he said he’s finding the biggest reason for consumers not wanting AI is concerns about people losing their jobs, followed by issues such as privacy and quality. What’s unclear is how companies will deal with those concerns, he said.

“There will be some companies that are going to differentiate themselves by saying no to AI. But it will probably be niche because it will increase their costs,” Cicek said. “The people will be willing to pay more for things just made by humans.”