The most consequential consumer-behavior data point of 2026 is hiding inside an artificial intelligence poll.
According to a Data for Progress survey released in February, Americans who use AI every day are +57 favorable on AI. Americans who rarely or never use it are −42. The 99-point gap between the two groups is wider than the political gap (~14 points), the gender gap (26 points), the racial gap (32 points), or the age gap (35 points) recorded in the same survey.
Put differently: how frequently an American uses AI predicts their view of the technology — and increasingly, their view of the future — more than party, gender, age, or race. By a 3-to-1 margin.
A New Consumer Cohort
The data has produced a category that did not exist 24 months ago: the AI Power User.
According to Pew Research, 31% of Americans now interact with AI at least several times a day — up from 22% in February 2024. Among those daily users:
73% expect AI to improve jobs (vs. 23% among non-users)
75% say AI will personally benefit them (vs. 24% among non-users)
They report higher household income, higher educational attainment, and higher purchase intent across categories
The cohort is also disproportionately concentrated in urban markets, in the professional class, and in households where teenagers — 64% of whom now use AI chatbots, per Pew — are accelerating adoption from the bottom up.
Faster Adoption Than the Internet
The shift is happening at a pace without precedent. Harvard economists Alexander Bick, Adam Blandin, and David Deming calculate that generative AI reached 39.4% of U.S. adults within two years — outpacing both the personal computer and the internet at the same stage.
Internationally, the U.S. (39% optimistic) ranks 31st of 32 countries in the Stanford HAI 2026 AI Index. Asian markets dominate the top of the table: China (83%), Indonesia (80%), Thailand (77%), Malaysia (75%). Yet Germany and France have each risen 10 points on AI optimism since 2022.
The trend, globally and domestically, points in one direction. The Power User profile is becoming the consumer norm.
Implications for Brands and Communications
The behavioral shift is also a discovery shift. Power Users do not begin their research on Google. According to Ipsos, one in four Americans now uses AI chatbot-style tools "often" — and among daily users, those engines are the first stop for product research, professional decisions, travel planning, and brand consideration.
For consumer brands, this restructures the marketing funnel. Traditional SEO ranks individual pages. AI engines surface entities — brands, products, and people — based on retrieval signals embedded across the web. The new visibility metric is Citation Share inside the AI engines themselves.
Ronn Torossian, founder of New York-based 5W, which rebranded earlier this year as "the AI Communications Firm," puts the shift bluntly:
"The people using AI every day are simply living in the future first. Life before AI will soon feel like life before the cellphone, email, or the internet. The brands listening to Power Users now are the ones who'll still matter when everyone else catches up."
5W is among a growing list of agencies introducing dedicated Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) practices — a discipline pioneered by Princeton-affiliated researchers and now adopted by holding companies and independents alike. Industry tracker O'Dwyer's reports a 4x increase in agency mentions of GEO services year over year.
The Power User cohort will keep growing. As it grows, the 99-point gap will not stay at 99 points — it will close. But the early users will continue to set the buying patterns the rest of the country follows.
For brand teams, the question is no longer whether to invest in AI visibility. It is whether the brand is citation-ready before its category's Power Users start asking the engines for recommendations.
The data suggests they already are.
