The story of AI at Mumsnet is primarily a data-insights story. With users generating 1.5mn fresh words every day and a 25-year old archive of more than 6bn words, the site is a treasure trove of consumer insights. AI has ‘turbo-charged’ Mumsnet’s ability to unlock that value for brands.
Before I spoke to Mumsnet CEO Sue Macmillan at last November’s Definitive AI Forum, in London, I thought of Mumsnet as an old-school forum where British parents went to find advice on teething and tantrums, albeit one courted by vote-hungry politicians. I genuinely did not have ‘Mumsnet bosses AI’ on my 2025 bingo card.
However, on the stage at Stationers’ Hall, Macmillan quickly set me straight, enthusiastically telling me how the 25-year-old parenting forum is harnessing AI to power stronger pitches and deliver more actionable insights to brand partners. “I feel like AI has just changed everything and I think that is really exciting.”
If I had thought about it logically, Mumsnet really is the perfect publisher use case for AI. Members of the parenting forum generate 1.5mn words every day (yes) and since launch in March 2000, it has grown to become a repository of more than 6.5bn words. That’s quite the dataset.
Mumsnet hired its first data scientist nine years ago after a prospective hire told the management team that analysis of what had been posted in Mumsnet in the run up to the Brexit referendum in the UK would have predicted the result. “We said, ‘You’ve got the job!’” laughed Macmillan.
“People are not just talking about parenting. They’re talking about brands. They’re talking about products and politicians,” she explained. “We knew there was unbelievable data and insights in there. What Gen AI did was turbo-charge our efforts to turn that into something that could be really useful and actionable.”
Just six months after the momentous launch of ChatGPT, Mumsnet had developed the first proof-of-concept for MumsGPT, an internal chatbot which analyses all of the discussions on Mumsnet to determine what forum users think:“It allows people to [ask] what do Mumsnet users think about, say, UK prime minister Keir Starmer? What do they think about the Sainsbury supermarkets? What do they think about any question you want to ask?”
The benefits of Mumsnet’s AI-driven approach to data analysis range from the sheer size of the dataset to the fact that it can be run more or less in real time. “We are talking to brands, saying you don’t really need to go to the expense of running focus groups with mums anymore,” said Macmillan.
Anonymity and honesty
She highlights one crucial advantage for sentiment analysis in Mumsnet data – the honesty of the conversations taking place on the site: “People are having really honest conversations because it is anonymous.”
The CEO describes its forum posts as the opposite of social media’s ‘stealth boasts’ featuring pictures of angelic kids doing amazing things: “You don’t put the picture up of the moment they wouldn’t get in the car seat and they threw a massive tantrum. On Mumsnet you are talking about those and you’re talking about the mother-in-law and the neighbours who’ve parked in your space and everything and anything. It is real, honest, authentic data, and there are incredible insights within that.”
As an example of real-life insights that undercut conventional wisdom, she points to the ‘twinning’ trend that sees parents dressing the same as their children: “Brands got really excited about it a few years ago. But two-thirds of people on Mumsnet hate that trend.”
They have also, for example, debunked the long-held belief that Brits book their holidays in January: most Mumsnet users book in July, August or September. Also the annual ‘Spring clean’ of homes is actually done in January, straight after Christmas not in the Spring at all.
Macmillan underlines the importance of user privacy and explains that AI is only used to synthesise insights from anonymous, aggregated data. However, she also highlights the community’s enthusiasm for sharing their opinions: “Our users love to tell brands and organisations what they think.”
Real-world results
Looking at success factors, Sue Macmillan says AI-powered data insights are helping with every brand pitch that Mumsnet makes to would-be advertisers and sponsors: “We can see it in our pitch conversion rate. It’s going up as a result of being able to say, ‘Look, we are the experts on this audience. We can tell you what you can’t get elsewhere.’”
And, while the platform has always been a rich source of insights, she sees potential to leverage AI to grow Mumsnet’s data-to-business services: “One of the things we’re working on at the moment is segmentation,” she said, highlighting the value in knowing what different types of mothers are thinking at different life stages.
But whether its sentiment analysis, trend tracking over time or behavioural insights, the key for Mumsnet is actionable insights for brands: “That’s what we hear loud and clear from them. Everybody has dashboard fatigue… there’s so many sources of data out there. The focus of what we’re doing is how we take that data and turn it into something that can be used by everyone who works in these organisations to improve what they do.”
Culture change
Macmillan described herself and Mumsnet founder-owner Justine Roberts as AI evangelists and explained that they see AI as a cultural shift as much as a technology shift. They were early adopters of ChatGPT and have encouraged their team to share how they are using it across the business. “We have an email that goes out every week from me, and it celebrates a great use of AI this week.”
The scale of AI adoption across Mumsnet is impressive. There are now over 100 custom GPTs in operation across the business. “We have a list of them all. People can see how they’re being used. They can see other people’s prompts and we’re constantly sharing how people are using them.”
Macmillan emphasised that the speed of change means people need to be using the tools regularly to be able to understand them: “They are moving so quickly that people have got to use them on a day-to-day basis.”
AI is currently absent from the Mumsnet user experience, but the CEO can see a role for it in improving search functionality and personalisation: “We are thinking about what it means for discovery on Mumsnet. There are possibilities around AI answers, like Reddit answers, but Mumsnet answers.”
However, while she sees AI assisting content discovery, she doesn’t see any place for AI in content generation. “A big part of the reason why people come to Mumsnet is there are amazing stories every single day about other people’s lives. What are human beings more interested in than anything else? Other stories from human beings.”
She suggested people should think of AI as a ‘thought partner’, an electric bike rather than a self-driving car. “You can’t just let it run for you, take your eyes off the wheel and play a video game. It’s an electric bike. You pedal and it goes faster, but you’ve got to pedal. You’ve got to steer.”
Listen to the full session above, or by searching ‘The Publisher Podcast’ on your podcast app of choice.
