According to a recent report from Emarketer, a market research firm, the number of generative AI users in the United States is set to surpass 100 million by the end of 2024, accounting for a 900% increase since 2022. 

These figures demonstrate that in less than two years, the integration of generative AI technology into users’ everyday lives has skyrocketed. Perhaps the most significant development in recent generative AI adoption is Google’s integration of AI into its search engine, which, in turn, enabled most Americans to utilize AI services whether they realize it or not on the largest digital platform in the world. 

Yet Google is just one of many companies bringing AI into our everyday lives. Apple is beginning the integration of AI functions into its devices with Apple Intelligence, Meta is unveiling AI services across its suite of social media platforms, and TikTok now offers brands the option of using AI-generated avatars of real human influencers to advertise. In 2024 alone, the world’s most popular Large Language Model boasts over 77 million active users in the US.

Generative AI Everywhere

Whether or not Americans utilize AI during hours of leisure, it is just as likely they have or will encounter it in the workplace. Workplace adoption is on track to drive nearly half of generative AI use by 2026. Adoption of AI by enterprises is surging: for the past six years, AI adoption by organizations surveyed by McKinsey has hovered at about 50%, but in 2024, the survey found that adoption of AI in business and the workplace has jumped to 72%. Two thirds of high school and college teachers say they use AI technology for education, while the healthcare sector is already experimenting with utilizing AI for diagnosis, development of medication, and treatment plans. 

In other words, AI is on track to become a daily component of our personal and professional lives. The widespread familiarity with generative AI technology will inevitably drive the interest in tools capable of creating synthetic content. Already, AI-generated media and articles are flooding digital spaces, as experts find that over half of the internet now consists of low-value AI-generated sludge. While the Reality Defender team believes that the responsible development and use of AI is great for humanity, the oversaturation of digital spaces – which have by now become an essential part of material reality – with deepfakes is a dire issue in need of immediate solutions.

Protecting Millions from Deepfakes

This influx of AI-generated content calls for powerful multi-modal deepfake detection solutions that can be applied across all text and media types in real time and at scale. The prominence of AI will ensure that users will increasingly encounter deepfake content in every facet of their lives, and given our mission of detecting deepfakes at the top instead of putting the onus of detection on individual users, the accurate analysis and labeling of deepfakes will necessitate that platforms and places where users congregate integrate effective detection into their regular workflows. 

Be it social media platforms protecting users from the spread of the next pornographic deepfake, or workplaces utilizing detection tools to protect employees from AI-generated emails or deepfake phone calls using the CEO’s voice clone, the institutions that permeate our lives can strive to match the onslaught of synthetic content by adopting the tools that will allow us to recognize and label such content before it can negatively impact our lives at work and at home.