Here’s a number worth sitting with. Half of consumers now say they’d rather buy from a brand that doesn’t lean on AI to make its content. Not because they’ve turned against technology – most of them use it every day – but because when it comes to the stuff a brand actually puts in front of them, a lot of consumers prefer brands without AI doing the talking. That comes from a Gartner survey of more than 1,500 people, and if you’re deciding where to point your content budget this year, it’s the kind of stat that should change the plan.
Half of shoppers now prefer brands that skip AI.
Gartner asked 1,539 US consumers how they feel about brands using generative AI in their messages, ads and content. Fifty percent said they’d prefer to give their business to brands that don’t (you can read the survey here).
And it runs deeper than a mild preference. 61% said they frequently question whether the information they use to make everyday decisions is even reliable. 68% said they often wonder whether the content in front of them is real at all. People aren’t only sceptical of AI – they’re sceptical of everything, and they’re checking more before they believe it. Gartner found only 27% still trust their gut to decide whether something’s true. The rest are verifying.
The gap between brands and buyers is getting wider.
Here’s the part that should worry anyone still on the fence. The people making the ads think shoppers are fine with AI. The shoppers aren’t.
IAB ran the numbers with Sonata Insights and found that 82% of ad executives believe Gen Z and Millennial consumers feel positive about AI-generated ads. Only 45% of those consumers actually do. That gap has grown from 32 points in 2024 to 37 points now (the full IAB study is here). Meanwhile AI use in ad creation jumped from 60% of companies in 2024 to 83% this year, and 71% of younger consumers say they’ve spotted an AI-made ad in the wild, up from 54%.
So there’s more AI, more people noticing it, and a widening disconnect over how they feel about it. Among Gen Z it’s sharper still: 39% feel negative about AI ads, nearly double the Millennial figure, and 30% of them describe brands that use AI for ads as “inauthentic”. That word – inauthentic – is the whole problem in one.
What this actually means for your content.
None of this makes AI the enemy. Used quietly behind the scenes – a rough cut, a transcript, a first pass at captions – it’s just a tool, and a useful one. The trouble starts when it becomes the face of your brand. When the thing a customer sees, the video, the photo, the review, feels manufactured, you’ve spent good money making people trust you a little less.
And people are getting sharp at spotting it. That’s the real shift. A year ago you could get away with a glossy synthetic ad and most people would scroll past none the wiser. Now half your audience would rather you didn’t make it that way, and a growing share can tell the difference on sight. The maths has flipped: the “efficient” option is quietly becoming the expensive one.
Real people are the trust play.
This is exactly where UGC earns its keep. A real person, filming on a real phone, in an actual kitchen or hotel room or high street, talking about your product the way they’d talk to a mate – that’s the opposite of everything the sceptics are bracing against. It doesn’t read as an ad because it isn’t one. It reads as a recommendation.
I’ve written before about why brands keep choosing human UGC over AI content, and about what makes UGC feel authentic and what kills it instantly. The Gartner and IAB numbers just make that case louder. When 68% of people are quietly asking “is this even real?”, the brands that win are the ones who can answer, “yes – that’s an actual customer, filmed on an actual Tuesday.”
You don’t need to slap a “no AI here” badge on everything. You just need content that feels like a person made it, because a person did.
How I’d play it for the rest of 2026.
Keep AI where it belongs – helping with the grunt work – and keep real humans on camera. Film with creators who’ll show your product in a life that looks like your customer’s, not a rendered one. Lean into the small, honest details that signal “this really happened”: the natural light, the offhand aside, the slightly wobbly handheld shot. And if you are using AI somewhere a customer can see it, just be upfront – IAB found that disclosing it tends to lift purchase intent rather than dent it.
The market has told you what it wants. It wants to trust you again. Real content is how you let it.
If you want scroll-stopping UGC that feels like a friend’s recommendation and not a 30-second ad, that’s exactly what I do – filmed, edited and delivered end to end. Have a look at my pricing, or email me at [email protected] and let’s make something real.
