A gender gap in AI’s future impact

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 20/10/2026

Women view AI more negatively than men. A new survey shows that women are about twice as likely to say AI will have a negative impact on them personally over the next 20 years than a positive one (33% vs. 17%), the Pew Research Center reports from a US study. Men, by comparison, are more evenly split. Roughly an equal share of men predict positive outcomes as negative ones. AI chatbots have become a source of news for more in the past year. 15% say they get news from AI chatbots at least sometimes, up from 9% in 2025.

“When it comes to its societal impact, 43% of women expect AI will affect society negatively. Far fewer think it will be positive for society. While men’s views about societal impact also tilt negative, the gap is not as large.”

A majority believe AI is moving too fast, but women are more likely than men to say this (68% vs. 58%).

Key findings:

• Chatbot use is on the rise for both men and women – but women saw a steeper increase since 2024. 
• The gender gap in overall chatbot use has closed. A similar share of men and women now report using AI chatbots. This is a shift from two years ago, when men were 11 percentage points more likely than women to say this.
• Men are more likely than women to say they use chatbots on a daily basis (27% vs. 20%).
• Men are more likely than women to say they ever use Microsofy’s Copilot (22% vs. 13%).
• Larger shares of men than women also report using Google’s Gemini, xAI’s Grok and Anthropic’s Claude. OpenAI’s ChatGPT – the most widely used chatbot in the survey – is used by identical shares of men and women.

“In several categories, men are somewhat more likely than women to say they use chatbots. These include searching for information, work tasks, fun or entertainment or getting news.”

“Women are slightly more likely than men to say they use chatbots for emotional support or advice. There are no gender differences in reporting using chatbots for companionship.”