Readers’ poll

We wanted to know how much people would pay per month for a do-it-all AI assistant. The answer… not a lot.

We think it’s safe to say that our readers have some doubts about the difference AI will make to their lives! And certainly whether they would pay for it. Do let us know if our feature on p26 changes your mind by emailing letters@pcpro.co.uk.

Graham Watts summed up the mood on our Facebook page. “What I really need is something predictive, that can realise I came in late on a Friday night, have no plans for Saturday morning in the calendar and do things like cancel my normal routine alarm or not trigger my usual early morning lighting routine,” he wrote. “Until there’s something genuinely useful it’s not worth paying for... unless they want to drop the spying/intel/data gathering aspect of them, of course.”

Geoff Campbell echoed that view. “For a genuinely do-it-all assistant, like an automated PA, I’d pay tens of pounds a month. That would require close integration into a lot of external services, however, which has to solve a lot of problems more about security than AI first. For a more basic intelligent calendar organiser sort of thing, if done well, a few pounds a month.”

And finally, some good and bad news for Microsoft. “I’ve been using the new Bing,” wrote John Moore. “It’s a super step forward. But would I pay? Not unless it was part of my 365 subscription.”

Depends who owns the data/back end. I’d need a lot of convincing to use it for anything but the most general of tasks #MYdata. Stuart Hughes [I’d pay] nothing, no use for it but my dark amusement. Keith Miller I’d ask it to tell me how to get it for free and pay nothing. Davey Winder

I’d expect to pay exactly the same as I pay for Google search: no monetary value, just give up some privacy. mobailey