Aussies pay up as use of artificial intelligence surges
More and more Australians find AI so useful that they are willing to pay for it.
Analysis of credit and debit card transactions of 8.3 billion Westpac customers found that more than 150,000 retail customers were paying for at least one AI subscription per month in March, with the average monthly spend being $37.
This is an almost 14-fold increase on the 11,000 Australians who paid to use AI in March 2023, and a 145 per cent increase on those who paid to use AI a year ago.
Dan Jermyn, Westpac’s AI chief, said there was rapid growth in the use of AI.
“The year-over-year increase is not only continuing at the same rate, it is accelerating,” he said.
“So I think we’re actually just at the beginning of this.”
Westpac has approximately 10 million customers across its retail businesses, including the St.George, BankSA and Bank of Melbourne brands.
The $5.6 million monthly AI spend is just a fraction of the Westpac customer’s $6.7 billion annual subscription spend, but Mr Jermyn compared it to streaming services.
Such services were not available not so long ago with the launch of Netflix in Australia in 2015, but now these and similar services have become a household staple.
“I think you will see AI tools becoming a mainstream tool, not just a niche extra tool,” Mr. Jermyn said.
Westpac’s figures identified spending on AI services such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, but did not include Google’s Gemini, where access to the chatbot’s premium service is included as part of a larger suite of tools.
Mr Jermyn said many more Australians would benefit from free AI services.
Mr. Jermyn said the big increase in subscribers was likely fueled by services such as Claude Code and OpenAI Codex, which are AI-powered coding assistants for software engineers.
Westpac customers’ interest in artificial intelligence has also been reflected within the bank itself.
In February, Westpac rolled out the Microsoft 365 Copilot service to customers, becoming the first major organization in the region to do so.
“We now have over 35,000 users using this app and the engagement has been incredible,” Mr Jermyn said.
Westpac said its employees are using AI to automate tasks in their work, allowing them to spend more time with customers and use their creativity.
When it comes to product development, he said AI software tools allow Westpac engineers to create prototypes of new product designs and features very quickly.
“This really empowers our employees to serve our customers in a way that goes beyond what was possible before they gave us access to some of these tools.”
