Growing AI adoption doesn’t automatically bring growing trust. AI is becoming a bigger part of how consumers search, shop, connect, and make decisions. As its role across the customer journey expands, retailers and marketers need to know where consumers are comfortable relying on it, where skepticism remains, and how their own use of AI can strengthen or undermine the trust they’ve already earned.

In a new EMARKETER guide titled "AI, authenticity, and the changing dynamics of consumer trust," our analysts and industry leaders give their perspectives on how AI is changing consumer trust, what puts that trust at risk, and what marketers can do to earn and maintain it.

Nate Elliott, EMARKETER’s principal analyst covering how artificial intelligence affects marketing, advertising, and commerce, talked to us about where marketers and consumers are most out of step on AI and how the new tools are changing consumers’ tolerance for personalization.

Q: Where is the biggest mismatch between how consumers have adopted AI and how marketers are trying to reach them there?

A: Brands think AI offers them a vital marketing channel today. But while AI occupies so much of our attention, and adoption has grown with remarkable speed, it’s just not that big right now. AI is likely to grow into a vitally important marketing channel over time, but today most consumers are using it only experimentally, and marketers should do the same.

Q: Which uses of AI by brands pose the greatest risk to consumer trust?

A: The AI that poses the greatest risk is the AI that people notice. Consumers are incredibly wary of AI slop, even though they often can’t tell the difference between human-generated and AI-generated content. They’re also growing leery of AI interactions, but in many cases don’t even notice the well-executed ones. The reality, of course, is that many of our customers’ online experiences for the past decade have been powered by AI and machine learning. If you do it well, people don’t notice or care. If you do it poorly, watch out.

Q: Does the distinction between content “created by AI” and “created with AI” meaningfully affect consumer trust?

A: No. And that’s my biggest problem with AI labeling. It’s nearly impossible to find a piece of online advertising or content that AI didn’t touch in some way, whether during the audience research that identified the need for that content, the brainstorming and concepting, the first creative drafts, the revisions and edits, or the targeting and delivery. With AI now touching everything, labeling is basically arbitrary. It also relies on good actors doing the right thing while bad actors continue to skate free.

Q: How is AI changing consumers’ tolerance for data-driven personalization?

A: Again, the bad examples rule the day. When advertising or content is targeted badly, consumers are likely to blame AI whether the problem was human-generated or computer-generated. The best examples of personalization have always been the ones that our audiences never noticed. That’s as true in the era of AI as ever.

Q: In the age of AI, what should brands prioritize now to build lasting trust and loyalty across generations?

A: Quality over quantity. Yes, AI can help us make more content faster. But the smartest brands I talk to are using it to make better marketing rather than just more marketing. The incremental improvements AI can drive in our advertising performance, whether that means more attention, stronger brand impact, additional clicks, or higher revenue per conversion, will outweigh our ability to just crank out more creative.

Read the full guide.