Millennials are on board with artificial intelligence-fuelled advertising: Report

Swedish furniture retailer Ikea recently asked its customers how they’d like an artificial intelligence enabled couch to interact with them. Along with votes for the couch to be humanlike and obedient, 51% of respondents said they would like the couch to collect data on them to improve experiences.

This sentiment has been echoed further in a report by marketing platform Rocket Fuel on Consumer Perceptions of AI, which shows nearly two thirds of millennials believe the use of artificial intelligence to further personalise advertising offerings is beneficial, reports B&T.

Additionally, 80% of respondents aged 24-35 said they see value in personalised advertising from brands.

The survey sourced 1895 respondents from France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the US, Italy and Australia, who all had a bullish outlook towards artificial intelligence, with two-thirds saying they believed it to be an exciting development in technology.

Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed agreed artificial intelligence was becoming a part of everyday life, but only 61% of respondents were aware of its usage in advertising and marketing.

Mailee Creacy, country manager at Rocket Fuel for Australia and New Zealand, said in a statement that young consumers are increasingly aware of the “value exchange” that takes place between them and brands.

“They provide brands with personal data and expect to see their information used in ways that provides them with tangible benefits,” Creacy said.

“Being able to engage with millennials in a personalised way is the next frontier as brands seek to maintain and increase relevancy in the digital age.”

A recent survey of SmartCompany readers revealed artificial intelligence is top of mind for many business operators, who believe it to be one of the main disruptors of businesses in the next decade. Sixty percent of respondents said they are planning to implement new technology over 2017.

But there are plenty of people in the business community who are apprehensive about the development of artificial intelligence, including billionaire SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who is worried about the ramifications of artificial intelligence becoming too smart.

“One of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence [AI],” said Musk earlier this year.

“I don’t mean narrow AI — deep artificial intelligence, where you can have AI which is much smarter than the smartest human on earth.

“This is a dangerous situation.”

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