Sydney Gill is 19, a freshman at Rice University, and staring at the course catalog with a question no previous generation faced at registration: Which of these majors will still exist by the time she graduates? "I feel like anything that I'm interested in has the potential of maybe getting replaced, even in the next few years," she told the New York Times.

She uses AI. Most of her peers do. A Gallup survey of 1,572 Americans aged 14 to 29, released this week by the Walton Family Foundation and GSV Ventures, found that 51% of Gen Z uses generative AI at least weekly. That number is virtually identical to last year.

Here is the part that should leave the AI industry exposed: the generation raised on screens, the cohort that was supposed to carry AI into the mainstream, likes the technology less with every passing month. In 2025, 36% of Gen Zers said AI excited them. One year later, 22%. Hopefulness bled out nine points. Anger spiked nine points to 31%. Anxiety held steady at 42%, because it was already high.

The AI industry has a name for this trajectory. Churn.

Analysis
Maria Garcia

Maria Garcia

Los Angeles

Bilingual tech journalist slicing through AI noise at implicator.ai. Decodes digital culture with a ruthless Gen Z lens—fast, sharp, relentlessly curious. Bridges Silicon Valley's marble boardrooms, hunting who tech really serves.