The news: Consumers’ trust and interest in genAI-driven online content is declining as marketers’ AI spending grows, illustrating a gap between brand aspirations and customer realities.

• 32% of consumers in the US and UK see genAI as a negative force in the creator economy, compared with 18% in 2023, when AI was still nascent technology, per Billion Dollar Boy’s The Real Impact of AI on the Creator Economy.
• Only one-quarter (26%) think AI-produced creator content performs better than traditional creator content, down from 60% in 2023.

This rising discomfort with genAI content and doubt in its superiority over human-made content shows that consumers are becoming more dubious as AI advances and continues to proliferate the internet.

However, that’s not slowing down marketers’ genAI creator and influencer marketing plans: 79% of senior marketing decision-makers have increased ad spend on genAI creator content in the past year and plan to do it again this year. Nearly the same amount (77%) will pull budgets away from traditional creator marketing and toward genAI creator content.

The conflict: The data suggests marketers are optimizing for cost and content scalability while consumers remain focused on authenticity and trust. That misalignment could damage social campaign performance, especially in categories where credibility drives conversion, such as beauty and retail.

• As brands shift budgets away from human creators, they may erode the very differentiation that makes influencer marketing effective.
• Brands betting heavily on genAI content may need clear disclosures and human-AI collaborations to help mitigate skepticism and avoid being viewed as a low-quality content account.

The opportunity: Brands don’t need to retreat from genAI in creator marketing entirely, but they need to be methodical about how it’s deployed.

Rather than replacing human creators, use AI to enhance production efficiency—such as speeding up editing or generating background assets—while preserving image authenticity for audiences.

Recommendations for brands: In a market where trust is becoming a differentiator, brands that offer transparency, prioritize quality, and measure user sentiment as a core KPI for campaigns may see stronger long-term returns than those focused solely on content scaling.