Companies and Creators Alike Love AI, but Data Shows Customers Don’t

For companies, creators, and every other person trying to do more with less, AI feels like a dream come true. It is fast, cheap, scalable, always on, and endlessly available to write, edit, summarize, remix, animate, recommend, respond, and pretend to care. That is why so many businesses have rushed to fold it into marketing, customer service, sales copy, shopping tools, and content production.

HubSpot says about 94% of marketers plan to use AI in their content creation processes in 2026, while Billion Dollar Boy found that 70% of marketers plan to increase spend on generative AI creator content over the next year. In the same Billion Dollar Boy research, 81% of creators said their generative AI content gets better engagement than their traditional content, and 74% said AI will improve the quality and diversity of the creative assets they can produce.

That all sounds impressive. It also helps explain why so many executives talk about AI as if it were a universal solvent for cost, labor, and growth. But the mood on the customer side is not nearly as euphoric. The people building with AI and the people being marketed to by AI are not standing in the same emotional zip code.

Customers Are Not as Excited as the People Selling to Them

The cleanest way to put it is this: customers may use AI, but they do not automatically trust it. Pew found that half of U.S. adults say the increased use of AI in daily life makes them feel more concerned than excited, while just 10% say they are more excited than concerned. Gartner, meanwhile, found that 50% of U.S. consumers would prefer to give their business to brands that do not use generative AI in consumer-facing content.

The same Gartner survey found that 61% of consumers frequently question whether the information they use to make everyday decisions is reliable, and 68% frequently wonder whether the content and information they see is real.

That is the part many companies keep missing. Consumers are not reacting to AI as a cool efficiency story. They are reacting to it as a trust problem.

When every image can be generated, every testimonial can be polished within an inch of its life, every product description can be stretched past recognition, and every “helpful” recommendation might really be a paid nudge in disguise, people do not lean in. They pull back. They start second-guessing everything in front of them. That is not a minor shift in consumer behavior. That is the market getting tired, cautious, and a little annoyed.

The sales funnel gets murky when people feel like they are not dealing with a business, but with a machine trying very hard to impersonate one. And frankly, I know I am not the only person who would rather deal with an actual human at the cash register than be pushed through another self-checkout experience. I do the same thing with content.

The moment I realize a YouTube video is AI-generated, I am usually out. I do not even wait around for the information. I just move on. That is what a lot of companies still do not get. The issue is not only quality. It is the feeling. People are getting worn out by synthetic voices, synthetic faces, and synthetic phrasing. AI has already managed to make entire categories of language unbearable. Words like “landscape” now feel like a warning sign, and I refuse to “dive into” just about anything.

People Want Utility From AI, Not a Synthetic Relationship

The data gets even more interesting when you look at where customers are actually open to AI. They do not reject it across the board. They like it when it helps them do a job better, faster, or with less risk. Quad and The Harris Poll found that 51% of consumers would rather use AI-powered shopping tools to reduce the risk of making a bad purchase.

So the appetite is there when AI functions like a tool. But that same research found that 75% of respondents would trust AI agents less if recommendations were swayed by brand dollars, and the same share would trust brands less if they paid to influence those AI agents. In other words, customers welcome assistance, but they do not want invisible persuasion dressed up as assistance.

That distinction matters. People do not necessarily mind AI helping compare prices, summarize reviews, or surface options. What they mind is AI pretending to be neutral while doing sales work in the shadows. The moment customers suspect the machine is not helping them but steering them, the whole thing starts to smell like a digital version of a used-car lot with better lighting.

The Same Problem Is Showing Up in Content and Creator Marketing

This is where creators and brands should pay especially close attention. The temptation is obvious. AI can generate content in bulk, clone aesthetics, draft scripts, create visuals, translate voice, and turn one idea into fifty versions before lunch. But content is not judged only on speed. It is judged on whether it feels real, specific, earned, and human. Ipsos found that about three in four Americans want humans creating news and entertainment content, and about two in three want humans making their marketing and art content. Bain also reports that U.S. consumers are not comfortable with fully AI-generated content even if they are more open to humans using AI as a tool.

That is a major warning sign for any company that thinks it can swap authenticity for volume and call it innovation. It is also a warning for creators who assume audiences will accept AI-generated work just because platforms and brands do. Billion Dollar Boy says AI has moved from experimentation to infrastructure, but its own report also emphasizes “critical tensions between rising AI adoption and growing consumer resistance” and warns that “AI slop” is rising while audiences are fed up.

Transparency Is No Longer Optional

If a customer can tell you used AI and feels tricked, the damage is already done. Cint reports that 63% of U.S. consumers believe brands have a moral duty to disclose when they use AI-generated content. That is not just a branding note. That is a trust threshold. Consumers are telling companies, in plain English, that the offense is not only automation. It is automation without disclosure.

This is why some brands keep stumbling when they roll out AI-heavy campaigns with a smug, futuristic flourish. The public reaction is often less “wow” and more “so you cut costs and want applause for it?” That may sound harsh, but customers are pretty good at detecting when technology is being used to serve them versus when it is being used to replace care, craft, and accountability.

What Businesses Should Take From This

The lesson is not that companies should swear off AI and go back to doing everything by hand like it is 2009. That would be silly. The lesson is that AI works best backstage, not center stage. Use it to speed up research, assist with personalization, summarize calls, improve workflows, and help teams move faster. But when it comes to trust-heavy touchpoints such as brand voice, sales conversations, recommendations, testimonials, thought leadership, and customer relationships, businesses still need a human hand on the wheel. That is where credibility lives. That is where nuance lives. That is where people decide whether you are serving them or simply processing them.

For founders and operators, the real opportunity is not to sound the most automated. It is to become the company that knows where automation stops. Customers are not begging to be immersed in synthetic everything. They are asking for useful tools, clear disclosure, and proof that a real mind is still in the room. The companies that understand that will have a better chance of building something rare in this market: efficiency without creepiness, scale without sameness, and growth without the cheap aftertaste.

Companies and creators love AI because it promises leverage. Customers are more cautious because they are the ones being sold to, sorted, nudged, and sometimes quietly manipulated by it. That tension is not going away. If anything, it is becoming the real story of the AI economy. The winners will not be the loudest adopters. They will be the ones who remember that convenience can attract attention, but trust is still what closes the sale.