Cutting-edge AI is changing every aspect of the marketing world, but the use cases for research are truly impressive. QuestDIY surveyed* 219 U.S. market research and insights professionals to see how the field of market research is adapting and evolving with the advent of AI tools.
Here are some of the key takeaways.
AI has formally graduated from “handy gizmo” to “junior teammate.” Researchers overwhelmingly see AI as a support or opportunity—59% and 36% respectively—and 89% say it’s already improved their work lives.
The future is human-led, AI-supported, with AI doing the heavy lifting while people steer strategy and judgment.
What does that look like on a typical morning? You might find AI drafting first-pass reports, surfacing patterns across messy datasets, and assembling “good enough” hypotheses that a researcher then refines with context, ethics, and business sense.
By 2030, researchers surveyed expect AI to act as an advanced decision-support partner (61%), with stronger generative abilities (56%), synthetic data generation (53%), automation of core processes (48%), predictive analytics (44%), and “cognitive insights” (43%).
If you had to pick a single best use case for AI in insights, it’s analysis. Professionals we surveyed cited analyzing multiple data sources (58%); unpacking structured data (54%); automating insight reports (50%); analyzing open-ends (49%); and summarizing findings (48%) as key benefits.
“The center of gravity is analysis at scale—fusing multiple sources, handling both structured and unstructured data, and automating reporting.”
—Gary Topiol, Managing Director, QuestDIY
And it’s not simply about churning out this work faster. Researchers report AI improves accuracy (44%), surfaces otherwise-missed insights (43%), and accelerates delivery (43%), with a creativity boost (39%) to boot. In other words, AI helps you get to “the so what” sooner, and sharper.
98% of researchers have used AI at work in the past year, and 72% use it daily or more. Usage is rising (80% say they leverage it more than they did six months ago), and 71% expect to increase usage in the next six months.
Time savings are tangible: 56% report saving 5+ hours per week, while 15% save 10+ hours. That reclaimed time is getting redeployed into higher-value interpretation, stakeholder storytelling, and other human-first tasks.
A concrete platform example: QuestDIY (built by The Harris Poll, and part of The Marketing Cloud) bakes AI into survey drafting, question design, analysis, and deployment—supporting multimedia questions, quick translation, and real-time feedback across 100+ countries. You can field, analyze, and visualize faster than ever. And ISO/IEC 27001 certification is a nice data-security bonus.
None of this works without trust. The biggest brakes on adoption are exactly what you’d expect: data privacy/security (33%), lack of time to learn (32%), training (32%), and integration headaches (28%), with policy (25%) and cost (24%) not far behind. Teams also flag low transparency and the need to validate outputs (those pesky hallucinations).
Practically, that means the “human in the loop” isn’t optional.
Today, 29% describe their workflow as human-led with significant AI support and 31% as mostly human with some AI help.
The near-future market-research team looks like Research Supervisors and Insight Advocates guiding AI “insights agents.” There’ll be (real) people supervising rigor, ethics, and business alignment while AI drafts, cleans, codes, and dashboards.
If you want the one-line mantra taped to your monitor: “AI can surface missed insights—but it still needs a human to judge what really matters.”
With repetitive tasks offloaded to AI, researchers can pivot to strategic storytelling, ethical oversight, cultural fluency, and technical confidence.
The net result? More influence in an organization, not less, as researchers move from humble data gatherers to empowered advisors who shape business decisions.
Leaders who we surveyed made it clear that AI “elevates” researchers into growth drivers and strategic advisors. A successful researcher in the coming years will be a master of AI as well as being adept at all the things the AI can’t always manage: human curiosity, the ability to turn data into business-relevant narratives, and subjective judgment.
*The research was conducted using QuestDIY among 219 market research and insights professionals, defined as those who reside in the US, ages 18+, are employed full-time, and have a role in market research/insights in their organization. The survey was conducted August 15–19, 2025.
