Pierluigi Paganini
July 24, 2026
Businesses are rapidly adopting AI, with 93% planning deployment, but consumer trust lags far behind: only 23% trust companies to use AI with their data, revealing a major “AI trust gap.” Research from Thales shows trust depends on transparency and use case, as users favor Artificial intelligence for cybersecurity but resist it in high-risk areas like financial decisions. To close this gap and reduce fears, organizations must clearly communicate how AI is used, where it adds security, and where humans remain in control.
Before deploying artificial intelligence in a vacuum of industry stats, businesses would do well to do a social temperature check: do their customers even feel comfortable using it?
The Thales Digital Trust Index 2026 report reveals: yes and no.
It really depends on what you’re using it for. According to the survey, 93% of IT decision-makers are already deploying or planning to deploy generative AI. But only 23% of consumers trust companies that use artificial intelligence to handle their data.
That’s a 70% gap between what companies want and what their customers are saying.
Is the answer to just pull back on artificial intelligence? It doesn’t have to be. What we’re finding works is being informed and specific about where you want your AI adoption to lead.
The report’s findings boil down to this: trust depends on visibility into the use case and the sensitivity of the task. While customers might be comfortable with artificial intelligence in security scenarios, they may not feel comfortable with it acting on their behalf.
To avoid customer recoil, companies need to understand the differences and consider their rollouts accordingly.
Sitting in our industry echo chambers of AI news, AI solutions, and AI conferences can make adopting agentic AI solutions seem like a no-brainer for any company that wants to compete in the next 10 years or two.
But public opinion takes longer to catch up. And that’s what we’re seeing in the recent Thales survey results.
More than three in four users (77%) reported discomfort with artificial intelligence“helpers” acting on their behalf online. Newsfeeds are filled with cases of AI agents going rogue, like in the case of Cursor’s customer support agent (“Sam”), who was actually a “hallucinating chatbot.” Users were never warned.
According to the report, artificial intelligence is currently more likely to make consumers lose trust in an organization (38%) than gain it (25%). Not many people understand how it works, or trust that the organizations that use it do.
With the rapid pace of artificial intelligence change and growing list of wet cement policies, it’s a fair point.
This only proves that the roadblocks to artificial intelligence adoption are not purely technical: they are relational and rooted in effective communication. As technology and industry leaders, we have a responsibility to lead the way when it comes to telling consumers how their data is going to be handled by AI, what AI is not going to do, and when it’s being used: every single time.
When AI usage is clearly communicated, trust increases. We see this particularly in artificial intelligence cybersecurity use cases.
They may not trust AI agents to get them the right data or book a flight, but the Thales research shows that consumers do trust AI when it comes to cybersecurity. In fact, they prefer it.
When asked, 81% of partner users said that they would trust a partner organization more if it used artificial intelligence to strengthen its security. Seven out of ten similarly said their trust would increase if the organization used generative or agentic artificial intelligence to handle data and access management.
Noted one partner user in France’s hospitality sector, “Making much greater use of artificial intelligence would reassure me far more than current methods.”
They may not be up to date on every breach, but people have a sense that attackers are using artificial intelligence to exfiltrate their data and impersonate them online. In a recent survey by the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) and CybSafe, 63% reported being concerned about the risks of artificial intelligence-related cybercrime.
That’s why, when consumers see IAM practices fail to meet adversaries’ technical standards, doubts arise. They may not know how artificial intelligence secures them better, but they want to know that it still does.
Consumers also want to know that they have some control over the (artificial intelligence) situation. The research indicates that when users get to pick and choose how AI is used, trust goes up.
Of the surveyed respondents, 77% said they were worried about AI ‘helpers’ acting on their behalf, with only 25% saying use of AI makes companies more trustworthy.
The pattern is clear: consumers are far more comfortable delegating low-stakes tasks, such as canceling an unused subscription or finding a cheaper deal, than anything involving financial management or travel.
For instance, only:
While:
The lesson here is that when it doesn’t matter, AI usage doesn’t matter. But when it does – like in money, travel, and purchases – it does very much.
Against this backdrop, institutional AI adoption rolls forward. The Thales report states that 93% are using or anticipate using generative AI, and 92% are doing the same for agentic capabilities.
Despite the fact that less than a quarter of consumers feel truly comfortable with it (“23% of consumers say that they trust a company that uses AI to handle data”), organizations that understand the expediency of enterprise AI usage are pushing ahead, hoping to gain their customers’ confidence along the way.
The AI wave may be as misunderstood as it is hard to stop, but users are right to be wary.
Answers come when leaders balance transparency with requests for trust. AI tools must be released alongside well-communicated security controls, user guardrails, and explanations everyone can understand.
About the author: Ammar is a digital transformation leader specializing in Product Marketing with a focus on B2C Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) within the Identity and Access Management (IAM) sector at Thales. He is a recognized thought leader in digital banking and payments, sharing insights at various international conferences and authoring articles for industry publications. When not implementing strong customer authentication and fraud prevention strategies, Ammar enjoys a nice game of cricket!
Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon
(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Artificial intelligence)
