MUNICH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 29, 2026--
Nearly six in ten consumers are uncomfortable letting an AI assistant access their data. Most of them say yes anyway, and new global research shows a large share of that "yes" is based on resignation, not trust.
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According to the new findings based on a study of 11,000 consumers across seven markets conducted by Sapio Research, just 7% of consumers are fully comfortable granting an AI assistant access to their data with no conditions attached. More than twice as many, 17%, grant that access despite feeling uncomfortable about it: a pattern the report calls "resigned consent," permission given not because the request feels right, but because refusing feels like more trouble than it's worth.
The distinction matters because access rates and consent quality are being read as the same signal, when they are not. A resigned yes and a genuine one register identically in a consent rate. They do not behave the same way afterward.
"A resigned yes and a real one look identical in your consent rate, but behave nothing alike," said Tilman Harmeling, Strategy & Market Intelligence at Usercentrics. "One holds under pressure. The other holds until the first bad headline. If you can't tell which one you have, you don't know how much of your AI adoption is actually yours to keep."
The findings arrive as businesses across sectors expand AI assistants, copilots and agents into systems that touch consumer and employee data, often citing high opt-in or access rates as evidence the rollout is landing well.
Key findings:
"The goal isn't a higher yes rate. It's a more honest one. A considered yes from fewer people holds up better than a reluctant yes from many, which is exactly what we see in the UK and US," said Harmeling.
The full Resigned Consent Report is available here.
For the wider research, see the full State of Digital Trust Report 2026 — with country-by-country and generational breakdown.
About the research
The State of Digital Trust Report 2026 is the second annual study commissioned by Usercentrics and conducted by Sapio Research. The survey polled 11,000 consumers across seven markets: the UK, USA, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden. Fieldwork was conducted in March 2026 and is accurate to ±0.9% at 95% confidence. Sweden joins the study for the first time this year; year-on-year comparisons exclude Swedish data.
About Usercentrics
Usercentrics is a leading data privacy technology company that helps businesses collect, manage, and activate consented data with confidence. Trusted by 2.4 million websites and apps across 195 countries, the company processes more than 8.8 billion user consents every month. Through its platform, which spans consent management, server-side tagging, and AI data connectivity and access, Usercentrics gives businesses the compliance infrastructure to grow, innovate, and operate responsibly in an AI-first world. Learn more at usercentrics.com.
"Resigned Consent": New Global Study Finds Consumers Grant AI Access Reluctantly More Than Twice as Often as Willingly
HEBRON, Ky. (AP) — Vice President JD Vance cast doubt Friday on whether the Pentagon will livestream the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan in December but told reporters that if it is livestreamed, “I’m not going to be watching it.”
The Republican vice president said, “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” when asked about the plans that the Pentagon confirmed Thursday. But Vance then tried to set aside the controversy over the plans for a public execution and said Hasan’s crimes should not be forgotten.
Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting spree at the military base in 2009.
“So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people,” Vance said.
“Now, that said, I mean, look, if it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it,” he added.
Vance is a convert to the Catholic Church, which has long opposed capital punishment.
President Donald Trump had endorsed Hasan's execution by firing squad during a Wednesday political event in Texas, suggesting “he deserves it.”
However, Trump was noncommittal when asked Friday whether he wanted the execution livestreamed. "Well, they’re making a determination about that,” Trump told reporters before traveling to a political event in Syracuse, New York.
But he again endorsed the firing squad as the method.
“He will be killed. He will be, through firing squad,” Trump told reporters. “I really don’t care how he goes, as long as he goes. And I think the death penalty is a very worthy way of going for him.”
Trump did not answer when asked if he would watch a livestreamed execution.
Earlier Friday morning, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned the U.S. government’s decision to livestream Hasan's execution.
“It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War’s decision to publicly livestream the execution,” Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the conference, said in a statement. He added that the decision was “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.”
Trump approved the execution by firing squad days after a failed attempt to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection late last month pushed Tennessee’s governor to halt further executions in that state this year.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military hasn’t executed a service member by firing squad since World War II. The last military execution took place on April 13, 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was executed by hanging.
From Congress, lawmakers from both parties, Republicans and Democrats, widely condemned what they called the “gruesome” and “disgusting” decision to livestream the execution and implored the Pentagon to reverse course.
“Beyond disgusting,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, the Republican from North Carolina. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”
The lawmakers said the authoritarian-style spectacle would send a message that runs deeply counter to American values and its system of justice, and risks putting U.S. service personnel and others overseas at risk of blowback.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, condemned Hegseth’s plan, saying there’s a reason why “almost no countries in the world engage in this barbaric practice.”
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said how the U.S. carries out its system of justice matters, and urged the Pentagon “to reverse this gruesome decision.”
Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah pointed to Rome’s bloody spectacles of the past said Hegseth’s plan to livestream the execution risks “feeding that appetite” for corrosive entertainment.
“I urge him to reconsider,” Curtis said.
This story has been corrected to show the military base's name is Fort Hood, not Ford Hood.
Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Holly Meyer in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.
Vice President JD Vance speaks to members of the media at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026 in Hebron, Ky., as he departs for a rally in Lima, Ohio. (Samuel Corum/Pool Photo via AP)
