A new VnExpress survey offers a snapshot of Vietnam AI adoption among its readers: use is running well ahead of awareness of local products. Of more than 12,000 responses, collected September 28 to October 4, over 95% said they have used AI, and nearly 7 in 10 use it at least a few times a week. Yet nearly 63% said they do not know of any AI product or solution developed by Vietnamese companies or teams.
Who is using AI, and for what?
Roughly 76% of survey participants fall in the 35–54 age group, according to VnExpress. The top use cases are information search and Q&A, learning and research, and text or data processing. One respondent likened AI to a teacher they can talk to about things they do not yet know.
VnExpress noted that this age profile and these use cases suggest AI is being adopted as a professional and educational tool, not primarily as a novelty. The outlet observed that this could expand the pool of people applying and building AI beyond tech engineers.
What is holding back trust?
High usage frequency has not produced unconditional confidence. Respondents flagged three recurring concerns:
- Information that is inaccurate or out of date
- Difficulty verifying AI-generated answers
- Concerns about how personal data is used
One reader told VnExpress they had paid for a premium international AI tool that had still not caught up with Vietnam’s shift to a two-tier local government model (a restructuring of local administration that reduced the number of government levels). Many respondents, according to VnExpress, emphasized that AI is only a reference tool and that users still need to judge and decide for themselves.
What would a trustworthy Vietnamese AI product look like?
The four qualities respondents cited most frequently were understanding the Vietnamese language and local context, high quality and factual accuracy, solving problems specific to Vietnamese users’ needs, and protecting personal data. VnExpress noted that domestic products could have an advantage on tasks where global platforms have not prioritized local depth, such as industry-specific Vietnamese language, current domestic regulations, or workflows common to Vietnamese businesses.
Are people ready to pay?
Commitment is still cautious. According to VnExpress, 45% of respondents would use a Vietnamese AI product if it were free; 38.8% want to evaluate real-world results first. Only 11.7% said they are ready to pay. Asked whether they trust domestic AI products, 36.8% said they were not sure and needed to try them first, and 30.9% said they lack enough information to judge. VnExpress noted that the results reflect a self-selected group who chose to participate and do not represent all readers or AI users in Vietnam.
What this means for AI-search visibility
The 63% awareness gap is not just a marketing problem. It is a citation problem, and that distinction matters for any brand trying to appear when AI tools answer questions.
In Hingewise’s view, the practical picture is this: when someone in Vietnam asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews (Google’s AI-generated answer panels in search results) to recommend a local AI tool, the answer can only name brands that show up in the material those systems learned from or can find. A Vietnamese AI brand that has published little structured, verifiable content, and is rarely mentioned by others, will likely be left out, however good the product is.
The trust criteria respondents named are worth reading carefully. Three of them, accuracy, verifiability and Vietnamese-language depth, are also what, in Hingewise’s view, makes a page worth quoting in an AI answer. A product or publisher that consistently puts out clear, fact-checkable, context-specific content is building user trust and AI-search visibility at the same time, two goals that reinforce each other rather than compete.
The two-tier government example is a specific, actionable signal. A user paid for a premium international tool and still received outdated local information. That is a content gap a local publisher or product can own, but only if they publish updated, well-structured information in a form AI systems can locate and cite. That means structured pages, clear sourcing, and consistent coverage of Vietnamese regulatory and administrative changes, not a one-time press release.
In Hingewise’s view, the 11.7% willing-to-pay figure is less a ceiling than a starting point. Willingness to pay for local AI tools in Vietnam will likely track demonstrated accuracy and local relevance over time. The 38.8% who want to see real results first are the most actionable segment: they are not refusing to pay, they are asking for evidence. That is a tractable problem for any team willing to make their product’s performance measurable and public.
The broader question VnExpress raises at the close of its report is worth watching: will Vietnam produce more users of global AI tools, or also more builders of new ones? The answer will partly depend on whether local brands can close the awareness gap this survey makes visible, and that gap starts with content, not just code.
Quick checks before investing in Vietnamese AI visibility
- Does your product or brand have published content that addresses the four trust criteria: language depth, accuracy, local relevance, data protection?
- Is your content structured so AI systems can parse and cite individual facts, not just read it as a wall of text?
- Are you covering Vietnamese regulatory and administrative updates (such as government model changes) in a timely, citable format?
- Do third-party sources mention or review your product in a way AI training data can capture?
- Is your presence on platforms and directories that AI systems commonly draw from for Vietnamese market queries?
- Are you tracking whether AI tools actually cite your brand when users ask relevant questions, not just whether your website ranks on Google?
Source: VnExpress, October 4, 2026
Lam Nguyen · Hingewise
This article was drafted with AI assistance from the sources cited above and checked against them before publishing. The "What this means for AI-search visibility" section is Hingewise's editorial analysis, built on the frameworks and positions we use in our GEO work. How we work: Editorial policy.