Taipei, Jan. 31 (CNA) Around 36 percent of people in Taiwan have used generative artificial intelligence (AI), according to a survey released Wednesday by the government-sponsored Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC).

The survey of 1,068 internet users showed that using AI to generate text content was the most common application, followed by images, code and video.

Meanwhile, the use of generative AI was most common among those aged 18 to 25, with over 60 percent in that age group saying they had used the technology.

In addition, the age group of 18-35 was more upbeat about the future development of generative AI, at over 70 percent compared with 60 percent overall.

According to the MIC survey, 82 percent of the respondents said they had paid attention to generative AI development with media/entertainment (62 percent), education services (54 percent), and health care (50 percent) as the three top topics they had cared about.

However, only 24 percent of the respondents in the survey said they understood exactly what generative AI was with as high as 47 percent of them saying they had no idea about the emerging technology, according to the survey.

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The survey also showed that almost 20 percent of those respondents who had used generative AI paid for the use of the technology with MIC senior analyst Liu Yu-lin (柳育林) saying the technology has good potential to have more users to pay for it.

Liu said with generative AI rapidly influencing people’s daily lives, the technology is expected to become a must for them to learn.

For example, Liu said that knowing generative AI is expected to help jobseekers gain the upper hand in competition in the job market as users will be able to create content quickly.

While generative AI had seen rapid development, the survey found that 92 percent of the respondents had concerns about the situation with overreliance (64 percent), falseness and bias (61 percent), and privacy intrusion (43 percent) as the top three worries, according to the survey.

In addition, almost 50 percent of those aged 18-25 said they were worried about the impact on their job opportunities resulting from the presence of generative AI. The percentage was the highest among all the age groups in the poll.

According to the MIC, the survey had a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points.