Edelman Trust Barometer finds wide AI trust gaps by country and income

Edelman published the 2025 Trust Barometer, its 25th annual survey of institutional trust, at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 19 January 2025. The edition surveyed more than 33,000 respondents across 28 countries and, for the first time at this scale, devoted a dedicated section to trust in artificial intelligence.

The gap by country was wide. Edelman reported that 72% of Chinese respondents said they trusted AI, against 32% of Americans — a global average of 49%. India (77%) and Nigeria (76%) recorded the highest trust; Ireland, Australia, the UK, the Netherlands and Germany were among the lowest, each under 30%. The pattern tracked use rather than wealth: in China, where a majority of employees reported using AI weekly, more respondents said they embraced its growing role in daily life than rejected it, while in the US roughly three respondents said they rejected AI’s expanding use for every one who welcomed it.

Within countries, Edelman found trust unevenly distributed by demographic group: women, older respondents and those on lower incomes were consistently less likely to trust AI or feel comfortable with businesses deploying it, though the company did not publish those gaps as country-level percentages.

The AI findings sat inside a broader Barometer that recorded rising “grievance” toward government, business and the wealthy generally. Edelman’s own framing, echoed by its global technology chair, was that trust in AI “is no longer a given, it must be earned” — a caution against reading the technology’s rapid deployment as evidence that the public was already convinced.