OpenAI, Google and X have all slipped further in Roy Morgan’s rankings of the most-distrusted brands, reflecting fears among consumers about AI.
The data has shown that trust in several tech giants has continued to deteriorate in Australia with OpenAI having the deepest decline, falling three places to become 16th most-distrusted brand.
Google dropped to 14th and X fell to ninth. The movements come as AI adoption continues to surge.
Roy Morgan found 13.6 million Australians aged 14 and over (58 per cent of the population) now use AI platforms, with 10.5 million using ChatGPT.
Google is simultaneously developing and integrating Gemini, while X has incorporated Grok into its platform. OpenAI, meanwhile, has built ChatGPT into a mass-market consumer product. None of these improvements have translated into an improvement in trust.
OpenAI has now fallen 10 places in Roy Morgan’s distrust rankings over the past two quarters with research pointing to privacy concerns and the risk to personal data as the largest contributor to the deterioration.
“The latest results from the ongoing trust survey show distrust in both brands has grown quickly – despite neither facing a definable and definitive scandal such as alleged price gouging and profiteering by the large supermarkets, or significant service outages experienced by several of the distrusted telecommunications companies,” said Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine.
“Despite a lack of scandals, Australians are increasingly citing concerns about AI companies such that the customer interfaces don’t protect users’ privacy, the companies are unethical and dishonest, they’re too motivated by profit and greed, and also that the large electricity requirements to run the data centres these companies rely on are environmentally irresponsible.”
Optus remained Australia’s most distrusted brand, followed by Facebook/Meta, Temu, Woolworths and Coles.
Telstra also slipped two places to sixth following its recent nationwide outage in July. Shein moved down one place to eighth. BP and Shell deteriorated amid scepticism around fuel prices, while Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting entered the top 20 for the first time.
At the other end of the spectrum, Bunnings retained its position as Australia’s number one most trusted brand for an 11th consecutive quarter, followed by Aldi and Kmart. Commonwealth Bank and Apple rounded out the top five.
Brands including Tesla, Qantas and TikTok were all able to improve their rankings, but still remain in Australia’s top twenty most distrusted brands.
