Near-daily AI use in the US more than doubled in six months

Nearly one in five US adults now uses AI almost every day. Epoch AI and Ipsos polling puts the share using it 6-7 days a week at 18.7% in August 2026, up from 8.2% in March.

The bigger shift is in how often people use it, not how many use it. Any AI use in the past week rose more slowly, from 50% to 56.4%, while one-day-a-week users fell from 17.3% to 10.1%. Near-daily users now make up about a third of people who used AI that week, up from roughly one in six in March.

Treat the exact jump as approximate. The waves surveyed separate samples of 2,017 and 1,016 adults and asked different questions. March used one overall question with broad bands, while August asked for an exact day count per service and took the highest. Epoch says that could understate August's frequency, though the per-service format and exact counts could also affect answers in other ways. All of it is self-reported.

Why it matters: AI is becoming a routine habit for a growing group of Americans, even as nearly half of adults reported no use at all that week.