Conversational AI use expands, presents opportunities

Conversational AI is becoming more integrated into consumers’ lives every year, as tech like retail bots and virtual agents continue to improve the customer experience.

We forecast that close to 47% of the US adult population will use voice assistants at least once per month this year. This figure will inch closer to the halfway mark by the end of 2025.

We expect voice assistants to add nearly 10 million adult monthly users between 2021 and 2025.

• In 2022, 123.5 million US adults will use a voice assistant each month. This figure will grow to 130.1 million in 2025, representing nearly half of the country’s adult population.
• Privacy concerns, along with customer dissatisfaction with the experience, have led to slower adoption. After the adult user base rose by 11.8% in 2020, it increased by only 2.9% in 2021. Growth will decelerate further this year, to 2.6%.

Smart speaker commerce has not taken off in a significant way, and there’s ample room for growth in voice shopping and buying.

• Buying on these devices has yet to gain traction. Only about a quarter (26.8%) of smart speaker users ages 14 and older, or 8.9% of the population, made a purchase via the device in 2021, according to our estimates. Those figures will rise slightly in the coming years, climbing to 27.5% and 9.9%, respectively, in 2025.
• Voice commerce still faces some hurdles before it can be widely adopted, such as the difficulty of discovering products entirely by ear. However, new tech might address some of those issues by improving the customer experience.

Read the full report.