Despite all the technological advances, AI's standing with the general public keeps deteriorating. On Wednesday, Axios reported that the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo to leading AI companies, cautioning that U.S. data centers are undermining the party's prospects in a critical Ohio election. Around the same time, Pew Research released a study revealing that Americans' anxiety about AI is on the rise—52% said they feel "more concerned than excited" about AI's growing role in everyday life, a jump from 37% in 2021.

A recent CNBC poll of 18- to 34-year-olds showed that, when presented with the names of nine prominent AI industry leaders, most respondents said they don't trust those figures to "act responsibly" regarding AI. A May Economist/YouGov poll found that over 70% of Americans believe AI is progressing too quickly. The examples keep stacking up.

That growing dissatisfaction is now hitting companies where it hurts—their finances. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that tech firms are wrestling with a public relations crisis over their plans to construct AI data centers across the U.S., prompting them to sweeten the pot by offering job guarantees, investments in clean water, and other community perks. (In one instance, that included $50,000 bonuses for teachers in a Louisiana parish.)

The common thread running through these stories is that consumers don't see how AI is improving their lives, yet they're still expected to bear the costs. For an industry that has raised hundreds of billions of dollars on the premise of AI's inevitability, this souring public mood is turning into a business challenge, not just a PR headache—and industry leaders are beginning to take notice. Today, many consumers view AI in narrower terms, such as AI chatbots or AI-powered search experiences (like the now AI-transformed Google). They see AI features creeping into their everyday products, from email to TVs, whether they asked for them or not. They perceive AI as a tool helping kids cheat in school, including at the college level, which raises doubts about the worth of a degree. They hear about AI bots training on vast amounts of intellectual property belonging to others, enabling AI to produce art, videos, music, and writing—things that have traditionally been the domain of human creativity.

It's hardly surprising, then, that AI seems to be drawing more consumer pushback than other groundbreaking technologies—like the iPhone, the personal computer, or even the internet itself—did at comparable stages of adoption. Yet some remain taken aback by the public's response. They assumed AI's widespread use would naturally lead to acceptance, and that its omnipresence would eventually make consumers feel positive about the technology as it became embedded in the vast majority of tech products and services. Instead, consumer trends are heading in the opposite direction. Young people, in particular, are showing a growing interest in retro tech, from dumbphones to point-and-shoot cameras to tape decks and CD players. AI-free, algorithm-free classic iPods are fetching top prices on eBay. So-called "grandma hobbies" like quilting, knitting, jigsaw puzzles, card games, and Mahjong are suddenly everywhere. In-person meetups and activities, such as run clubs, are winning out over online dating.

Some in Silicon Valley might chalk this up to a messaging problem—perhaps executives need to explain AI more effectively to consumers so people can fully grasp its benefits. But the reality could be that consumers already understand AI well enough and simply don't think the trade-offs are worth it. When the promised upside isn't automated jobs with higher pay and shorter workweeks, but rather the threat of job loss, combined with AI features that consumers find far less appealing—like summarized web pages or chatty TVs—that skepticism hardens. There are those in the industry waking up to this reality. On a recent podcast, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky acknowledged that the AI backlash is genuine and largely stems from the fact that the industry isn't shipping products that "regular people" enjoy. "I think part of it's a narrative issue that we're not talking about AI correctly," Chesky said. "But part of it is we need to actually be developing more products that just regular people can use and say, 'I love AI because AI allows me to have a doctor on demand and I can't have that. I can't afford that.' And so I think we need more regular things."

Even Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, one of the industry's most prominent figures, conceded in a post on X this week that negative public perception of AI is a "big problem" that's fundamentally a "crisis of trust." He noted that people don't trust companies, governments, or the tech industry, as they "suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over."

The solution, he argued, was to deliver on AI's promises—for example, curing cancer. "I think by far the most accurate criticism of AI companies, including Anthropic, is that we haven't yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world. That is totally on us," he remarked.