As AI use continues to grow, so is frustration with the technology. From strange responses that don’t make any sense to learning curves to how it’s implemented at work, there’s no shortage of AI quirks to get used to.
How users are responding to those annoyances, though, is vastly different.
According to a new report from Adobe Acrobat and Firefly, frustrations are not few. In fact, of the 1,008 AI users surveyed, 91% said they have abandoned generative AI tasks in favor of non-AI methods over said emotion.
Mostly, that’s because writing high-quality AI prompts is a key strategy in effectively using the tool, but it’s not always totally intuitive. There’s a definite learning curve when it comes to writing prompts that will lead to the best output.
However, most users have a breaking point.
For example, when it comes to using AI tools that generate images, respondents said they expect a quality result after four attempts. By the seventh try, most simply give up.
For text tasks, users aren’t quite so patient. When it comes to prompting AI to write emails or social media posts, users want a solid response after two attempts and they give up altogether by the fourth.
However, some users do more than just give up on writing prompts. Some users actually take to yelling at the technology.
When it comes to responding in anger, the response is fairly gendered: Men are overwhelmingly more likely to scold AI. Per the report, men said they “shouted” at the technology in all capital letters 80% more often than women, believing it may somehow help to improve the result.
Meanwhile, the trend of being polite to AI is more common in certain industries.
Those in finance and banking reported using pleasantries like “please” 43% of the time. Similarly, those who work in education, transportation, and logistics did so 42%. Creative arts and healthcare workers only did so at 38% and 36%, respectively.
Interestingly, regardless of the fact that men are more prone to yelling at AI, they also seem oozing with confidence at their ability to use the technology well. Per the report, men were 15% more confident in their prompting abilities than women. However, their confidence did not match their genuine skill level: The prompts were only better 5% of the time..
Confidence aside, per the report, some helpful strategies for keeping frustrations at bay and getting better results include breaking the tasks into steps, saving your strongest prompts to reuse, fact-checking, and giving solid examples.
Unfortunately, pleasantries won’t help with better output. Likewise, neither will yelling at it. (Sorry, guys.)