Dive Brief:
- With AI use on the rise, consumers worldwide are increasingly concerned that brands won’t protect their personal identity data, according to Ping Identity’s 2025 Consumer Survey of 10,500 consumers released earlier this month.
- More than two-thirds of consumers now use AI, up from less than half last year. However, just 17% of consumers fully trust organizations to manage their personal identity data.
- “Consumer confidence in brands is eroding as we enter a ‘trust nothing’ era fueled by AI-enabled fraud,” Darryl Jones, VP of consumer segment strategy at Ping Identity, said in a prepared statement.
Dive Insight:
Businesses everywhere are rushing to implement AI-powered technology to improve efficiency, reduce staffing costs, create new revenue streams and boost profits. However, with AI-fueled fraud on the rise and trust declining, consumers are increasingly demanding greater oversight and accountability.
But most organizations lack comprehensive AI guardrails. As a result, companies that safeguard consumers’ data privacy will gain an advantage over their competitors, according to Ping Identity.
“AI and the rise of agents is compounding the attack on trust, making threats more persuasive and harder to detect, which raises the stakes for identity verification and protection,” Jones said. “The brands that will thrive are the ones that make trust their top priority through stronger authentication, AI-transparency and identity-first security.”
Concern about data privacy is growing, with three-quarters of consumers more concerned than they were five years ago, according to Ping Identity. Consumers are particularly concerned about AI-driven phishing scams, with 2 in 5 citing it as their top fraud or scam concern.
Consumers generally want government regulation and guidance. Nearly three-quarters of consumers say it's important for governments to regulate AI to protect their personal information, with more than half reporting that guidance from safety organizations and governments does not sufficiently inform them about or protect them from scams.
Fortunately, more than 3 in 5 U.S. consumers say that they have at least “some trust” in brands to protect their personal identity data.
“Better education about threats and the leverage of security methods like AI optimization and biometric authentication may help strengthen that trust,” the report says.
Ping Identity recommends several steps organizations can take to boost consumer trust as they roll out AI initiatives, including implementing strong, seamless authentication methods such as biometrics and multi-factor authentication. It advocates for providing transparent explanations about how the organization uses and secures consumer data to alleviate consumer concerns; continuously monitoring, assessing and mitigating threats in real-time; and holding AI agents to the same standards as humans.
