50% of Consumers Prefer Brands That Avoid GenAI Content (nerds.xyz)
- Reference: 0181064494
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/03/21/0126208/50-of-consumers-prefer-brands-that-avoid-genai-content
- Source link: https://nerds.xyz/2026/03/50-percent-of-consumers-prefer-brands-that-avoid-genai-content/
> According to the research firm Gartner, 50% of U.S. consumers say they would [2]prefer to do business with brands that avoid using GenAI in consumer facing content such as advertising and promotional messaging. The survey of 1,539 Americans, conducted in October 2025, also [3]found growing skepticism about the reliability of online information , with 61% saying they frequently question whether information they use for everyday decisions is trustworthy... Gartner found that 68% of consumers often wonder whether the content they see online is real, while fewer people now rely on intuition alone to judge credibility [only 27%]. Instead, more consumers are actively verifying information and checking sources.
Gartner's senior principal analyst offered suggests discretion for brands trying to use AI. "The brands that win will be the ones that use AI in ways customers can immediately recognize as helpful, while being transparent about when AI is used, what it's doing, and giving customers a clear choice to opt out."
[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~BrianFagioli
[2] https://nerds.xyz/2026/03/50-percent-of-consumers-prefer-brands-that-avoid-genai-content/
[3] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-03-16-gartner-marketing-survey-finds-50-percent-of-consumers-prefer-brands-that-avoid-using-genai-in-consumer-facing-content0
For complex products, I want... (Score:2)
...an AI help system that honestly and accurately answers all of my technical questions, and I mean all.
I want it to be like talking to the engineer who designed the product, without the boss or PR department filtering the answers
Re: (Score:3)
Be prepared to pay $$$ for each answer then. The rush to centralise is a big telltale.
Re: (Score:2)
Or is a question and answer system that knows everything that is in the user manual and the service manual.
Re: (Score:2)
Best I can do is generic waffle, point you to our website, and some made up nonsense.
Re: (Score:2)
Okay well, AI will not solve your desires.
LLMs can't be trusted to be accurate. They mash words together based on statistics billions of layers deep, producing output that is very authoritative and confident sounding, but they to not have any semantic understanding of what they are calculating. Despite all the guardrails and tuning they still hallucinate or produce inaccurate results, and the time you spend figuring out if the output you got is trustworthy would have been better spent figuring it out yourse
Re: (Score:2)
> ...an AI help system that honestly and accurately answers all of my technical questions, and I mean all.
> I want it to be like talking to the engineer who designed the product, without the boss or PR department filtering the answers
While you may eventually get that, LLM-type of AI cannot deliver it. Fundamentally impossible, the Math used does not allow it.
Hence come again after the collapse of the current AI hype, the following, no doubt spectacular, AI winter and then the next hype in 20 year or so. Or several deranged cycles later.
Ads are still ads, and regardless of AI (Score:2)
They will continue to be annoying whether they are AI or human generated. They only care about getting you to buy their [a lot of times ] shitty product. The only real solution is to either mute them or block them. Most of what is sold via advertising is a solution looking for a problem, and usually requires a high markup in the price in order to pay for the advertising costs. A lot of advertising triggers people to buy the advertised product in a "myopic" buyer-to-advertiser relationship where the buyers t
Actual creativity (Score:1)
Turns out, the consumers want actual creativity and the medium and quality of the presentation matter much less!
Shiny sloppy LLM-weirdness cannot keep up with the most basic stop-motion paper cut-outs that e.g. SouthPark used on their famous first Xmas episode almost 30 years ago, or the most basic black and white legends from the beginnings of Hollywood.
At most, gen-LLMs can be a tool like paper cut-outs, and lower the threshold for creative people to create something of actual value - they cannot replace
Re: (Score:2)
> But the greedy, hollow suits&ties will see this headline as 50% will eat the slop, and wonder how they can convert and bully the other 50% into buying.
Indeed. As nicely exemplified by the comment of that Gartner person.
Use of AI is now a "low quality" indicator (Score:2)
While I am a bit surprised this many people see it, it is exactly on target. What LLM type AI does is make things cheaper and worse and you can only get both together. Obviously, many consumers have reached a limit on how far they are willing to go with that.
No surprise (Score:2)
"Gartner found that 68% of consumers often wonder whether the content they see online is real,"
54% of US adults read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
[1]https://www.thenationalliterac... [thenationa...titute.com]
60% of America's prison inmates are illiterate and 85% of juvenile offenders are functionally illiterate.
57% of students who drop out of high school do so because they are unable to read.
[2]https://www.abtaba.com/blog/us... [abtaba.com]
The percentage of US adults scoring at or below Level 1 increased from 19% in 2017 to 28% in 2023
[1] https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics
[2] https://www.abtaba.com/blog/us-literacy-statistics
50% (Score:2)
50% of surveys are wrong. The other 50% are bogus.
Re: 50% (Score:1)
First, WTF is wrong with the other 50%?
Second: Oh. I see.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
George Carlin
Re: (Score:2)
People who quote that quip aren't being half as clever as they think, since it rather depends on the distribution. A normally distributed "intelligence" with a very small standard deviation would not be much of an issue
Re: 50% (Score:2)
Still true as IQ is characterized on a normal distribution.
Re: (Score:2)
The distribution is known and the quip works. It is not a theoretical observation, but a practical one referencing a specific situation. I do agree that most people do not understand the reasons why the quip works, but it does.
That said, most people do not understand anything. They fall for the illusion of understanding (e.g. [1]https://davidcycleback.substac... [substack.com]) where they essentially repeat some statements they liked or that are common in their in-groups and then think they have gained understanding. Obvious
[1] https://davidcycleback.substack.com/p/the-illusion-of-understanding
Re: (Score:2)
50% of surveys are wrong. The other 50% are bogus.
And 87% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Re: (Score:2)
And 80% of all people do not understand how surveys work. Guess where you fall in there.