Coingecko: How much do people trust AI-powered influencers?

Source: Coingecko; Compiled by: Wuzhu, Golden Finance

How much do people trust AI-powered KOLs?

According to a recent survey, at least 1 in 4 people expressed high trust in AI-powered key opinion leaders (KOLs) or influencers on Crypto Twitter (CT). Of these 26.6%, 13.5% believe they can basically trust AI-powered KOLs, and 13.1% trust them completely.

In contrast, 21.4% of respondents expressed high trust in real-person KOLs on Crypto Twitter, a slightly lower proportion. 10.0% basically trust KOL accounts operated by real people on CT, while 11.4% believe they can completely trust them.

Overall, only a minority of respondents have a high level of trust in KOLs on crypto Twitter in general. Although AI proxy KOLs have only recently gained mainstream attention, they appear to have surpassed the original human KOLs in terms of credibility. The relatively high level of trust in AI agents may be due to the perception that AI agents have less personal bias, while trust in human KOLs may have gradually weakened over time.

The remaining 73.4% to 78.4% of respondents expressed limited trust in crypto Twitter KOLs.

19.8% of respondents have no trust in AI proxy KOLs at all, while a slightly higher 21.2% of respondents have no trust in human KOLs at all. Another 21.1% of respondents had some trust in AI proxy KOLs, and 23.2% had some trust in human KOLs.

About a third of respondents believed they could trust crypto KOLs to some extent, which was the most common view in the survey. Specifically, 32.5% of participants said they trusted AI proxy KOLs on crypto Twitter, while 34.3% had the same trust in real KOLs.

Trust in AI proxy KOLs vs. real KOLs

A whopping 62.0% of participants had the same level of trust in AI proxy KOLs and real KOLs. This suggests that at least three-fifths of participants did not differentiate between AI and real KOLs in terms of the degree to which they trusted crypto Twitter KOLs.

For example, 13.8% of participants had no trust in either AI- or human-based KOLs, while 9.2% had full trust in both AI and human-based KOLs.

Again, moderate trust in cryptocurrency KOLs took up the largest share and became the most consistent sentiment: 22.0% of participants (one in five) said they had some trust in cryptocurrency KOLs, regardless of whether they were AI or human.

Meanwhile, 22.6% of participants said they had more trust in AI-based KOLs than in human KOLs. For example, 3.4% of the participants did not trust human KOLs at all, but still had some trust in AI proxy KOLs.

On the other hand, 15.4% of the participants expressed the opposite view, trusting human KOLs more than AI proxy KOLs. Among them, 4.5% of the participants had less trust in AI proxy KOLs, but believed that they could trust human KOLs to a certain extent.