Only 4% of Australians Trust AI Companies With Their Data

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner surveyed 1,511 Australians in March 2026. The headline finding: 4% trust AI companies with their personal information. Four percent. That puts AI companies at the bottom of every sector measured — below health services (74%), below government agencies (68%), below banks and insurers. Only social media companies sit lower, at 3%.

This isn't an abstract policy finding. If your business uses AI-powered tools to handle customer data — scheduling, quoting, invoicing, client communications — your customers' default assumption is that the technology behind those tools can't be trusted.

Three years ago, 43% of Australians identified AI as a privacy risk. Today it's 69%. That's a 26 percentage point jump in a single survey cycle — the largest shift across any risk category in the OAIC's study.

The detail is sharper than the headline suggests. 93% of respondents said using their personal information to train AI models is unfair and unreasonable. 91% said the same about significant decisions informed by AI. Only 25% consider automated eligibility or risk assessments — the kind of thing AI-powered quoting and screening tools do routinely — to be acceptable.

Meanwhile, 13.6 million Australians use AI tools personally. 10.5 million use ChatGPT, according to ACS reporting on Australian usage data. They're comfortable with AI on their own terms. They just don't extend that comfort to businesses using AI on their behalf.

The survey asked what conditions would make AI use acceptable. The answers were specific: 81% want the right to human review of AI-informed decisions. 80% want limits on how long third-party providers retain their data. 79% want to be told when AI is being used. And 96% say at least some conditions should be in place before AI is deployed at all.

Then there's the number that changes the equation: 68% said they'd be more likely to use digital services if they believed their data was handled fairly and responsibly. That's not a threat. That's an addressable market. Two-thirds of your potential customers are telling you, explicitly, that transparency would make them more likely to do business with you.

Most businesses treat AI transparency as a compliance chore — something to sort out before the December 2026 Privacy Act disclosure deadline. We've written before about that obligation: from 10 December, every business covered by the Privacy Act must disclose automated decision-making in their privacy policy.

But the OAIC data tells a more important story. Your customers aren't waiting for the law. 79% already expect to be told when AI is used. The legal obligation is catching up to where consumer sentiment already sits.

For a trades business, that means telling customers what your scheduling or quoting tool does with their address and job history. For an accounting firm, it means explaining how your AI-assisted AML screening works before it flags a client. For any business with a customer-facing chatbot, it means labelling it honestly. The cost of this transparency is close to zero. The cost of not doing it — measured in lost leads, abandoned inquiries, and customers who quietly go elsewhere — is real and growing.

First, audit what AI touches customer data in your business. Most owners don't know. If you're running Xero, MYOB, ServiceTitan, or any modern practice management software, AI features are likely active — sometimes switched on by default.

Second, write a plain-English disclosure. Not a legal privacy policy — a one-paragraph explanation on your website or in your onboarding materials that says: here's where we use AI, here's what data it sees, and here's who to contact if you'd prefer a human involved.

Third, give customers a human option. 81% want the right to human review. That doesn't mean undoing your automation. It means a clear path for someone to say "I'd like a person to look at this" — and for that request to actually go somewhere.

Key takeaways

Want to deploy AI without losing customer trust?

The gap between AI adoption and customer confidence is widening. A short conversation can help you map where AI touches your customer relationships and build a transparency approach that turns a trust deficit into a competitive advantage. Book a call.