Using first names or sisters, praising or scolding? This is how Germans talk to AI bots: A daily reminder

“Dear KI, could you write me an email to answer this?” or “Hi KI, summarize the text quickly!”? Almost half of Germans (46 percent) have already used AI such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini – and they have very different ways of dealing with an AI bot.

Almost all (99%) use the AI's first name, and only 1% say the formal “you”. Two-thirds of people (66%) pay attention to spelling, for example to correct capitalization – with older people (80% of those aged 50–64 and up to 86% of those aged 65 and over) making more effort to spell correctly than younger people (56% of those aged 30–49 and 55% of those aged 16–29). But less than half (45%) usually formulate a request with a polite “please” and only 29% often say “thank you”. These are the results of a survey of 1,005 people in Germany aged 16 or over on behalf of Bitkom Digital Association.

“Even if AI doesn’t have any feelings, it might make sense to stick to common courtesy. In this way, AI can sometimes better understand normal, politely worded requests because the models have been trained in this language,” says Bitkom Managing Director Dr. Bernhard Rohleder. “Various experiments have also shown that AI achieves better results if you treat it politely.”

About one in twenty people (6 percent) have insulted their AI bot at some point. There is a clear gender gap. While 9 percent of men have been abusive to women, only 3 percent of women have. On the other hand, 13 percent of all AI users have actually praised the AI ​​(13 percent of men, 14 percent of women).