Artificial intelligence is rarely out of the headlines, but the public conversation often swings between hype and fear. To understand what it means for real people, we spoke to some from across the UK, from different ages, professions and backgrounds, and asked them how AI fits into their lives. What emerged was not panic, nor blind enthusiasm, but something more nuanced: practicality, caution and a strong instinct to protect what feels human. Here’s what they told us.
Summary.
AI is already part of everyday life, even if people don’t always label it that way.
AI is valued first and foremost as a time-saver.
The real fear is job loss, not robot apocalypse.
Trust is becoming fragile in a world of synthetic content.
People feel undereducated about AI and want clearer guidance.
The line in the sand is human connection.
AI is already part of everyday life, even if people don't always label it that way.
For most people, AI is not a distant, futuristic concept. It’s already embedded in daily routines at work, on social media and in online shopping. People talk about using tools such as ChatGPT, CoPilot or chatbots without necessarily seeing themselves as ‘using AI’. It feels normal, practical and quietly integrated into modern life.
“The big one we use at the moment is Co-Pilot. Snapchat has its own AI… on Messenger you can ask it something like, oh, what does this mean?" – Laura, 26
“I use ChatGPT fairly frequently for work activities.” – Greg, 41
“We've had some AI training and they've offered… you can use what they call CoPilot, which is our AI system.” – Louise, 40
AI is valued first and foremost as a time-saver.
The strongest upside people see to artificial intelligence is its efficiency. AI is seen as something that speeds up tasks, drafts documents, suggests ideas and reduces admin. It’s not described as a replacement for human thinking, but as a helpful assistant that removes friction from everyday tasks.
“It's good to find the information very quickly. Rather than paying someone two thousand pounds it would give me ideas” – Greg ,41
“We were saying how we think AI could actually help massively and reduce our time.” – Louise, 40
“I do encourage it using it in for like quick sort of, quick answers, or quick suggestions, or quick finds… I would like it to organise my day… I just haven't asked it to do that.” – Laura, 26
The real fear is job loss, not robot apocalypse.
Sci-fi narratives about machines taking over barely featured in our conversations. The more immediate concern is economic. People repeatedly point to things like checkouts, marketing roles and office-based jobs, and assume that if AI saves companies money, it will be adopted even if it costs people work.
“You don't need the workforce as much as you used to do. As much as technology is a brilliant thing, you've got to also think of how are you going to replace what people are doing?” – Michael, 64
“I do see it causing quite a lot of job losses and I do fear it… If it’s going to save companies money, they’ll do that.” – Laura, 26
“It does feel a little bit like, I could probably use ChatGPT to do the job that I used to do… I’ve seen a lot of people that I used to work with on LinkedIn looking for work.” – Greg, 41
Trust is becoming fragile in a world of synthetic content.
A deep unease ran through our conversations about deepfakes and AI-generated imagery. Participants describe a growing uncertainty about what’s real and what’s not. The difficulty of spotting manipulated images, or video feels personal and worrying.
“There was a woman on my social media whose face had been put on a naked body, and people genuinely believed it was her. I couldn’t have told you that wasn’t her. Now you never know what's real and what's not. And I think that's really worrying.” – Louise, 40
“They're so professional in what they do, you know, it's quite easy to fall into that trap.” – Michael, 64
“Despite the fact, with my Apple devices, I've turned off Siri, I've turned off the listening things, they still pop up with things that I'm thinking, how the… do you know that about me?” – Nina, 56
People feel undereducated about AI and want clearer guidance.
It’s clear to people that AI is moving faster than public understanding. There is less fear of the technology itself and more concern about not knowing enough about how it works or how to stay safe. There is a clear appetite for better education from trusted sources.
“I don't really like AI… I don't know an awful great deal about it. I don't think we should be afraid of it… but I think people need to be more educated on it.” – Michael, 64
“To get the right answers you have to kind of retrain it… but if you don't know to do that then people will just run with whatever it said originally.” – Greg, 41
“I'm going to sound like a really classic old person… I don't know much about it, but I'm really open to trying it…” – Louise, 40
The line in the sand is human connection.
While people are broadly pragmatic about automation, they are protective of emotion, creativity and personal connection. Admin can be automated. Housework can be automated. But relationships, care and human interaction are seen as things that should remain distinctly human.
“I hope it will be that element, that emotion that you can connect to people, that attachment to people, and that personalisation that you just probably can't get with AI.” – Louise, 40
“When you speak to people you have to speak to a robot anyways before you get to a human…” – Laura, 26
“It's getting more personal at the moment, like with some of the wording it uses… it's quite robotic… but I think it's getting better at the social cues so it's kind of like you're having a conversation like this…” – Greg, 41
