AI seeps into products and their marketing: Is it harming consumer trust?

AI seeps into products and their marketing: Is it harming consumer trust?

Browsing your favorite e-commerce site, you can buy a variety of AI gadgets, like an AI-powered board game for family night. If you’re curious what that entails, you can read the product description, which AI checkers suggest is entirely generated by AI. And while your mouse hovers over the AI-generated summary or you scroll through potentially AI-generated reviews, you may be wondering: Can you trust this product enough to add it to your family’s holiday shopping list?

AI-generated material is cropping up in product descriptions and advertising and marketing campaigns, a phenomenon Pangram examines in this story. While some can spot AI common writing patterns, this could be a further threat to consumer trust in companies and their products.

Mia Wang, an assistant professor in the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Design at the University of Colorado Boulder, researches the role of AI in consumer decisions. She said her findings suggest people have more negative perceptions of ads, particularly for luxury brands, that they know are AI-generated, a perception that can extend to the brand itself.

In July 2025, Vogue stirred up controversy when a spread for Guess published in their magazine featured an AI-generated model.

“What is important is not about AI doing the labor; first of all, it’s about the product category,” Wang said. “A luxury brand — they could use human labor to show some brand effort but instead of spending money and finding the real intelligent people to do the work, they use AI.”

According to Wang, this distaste for AI-generated advertising extends to brands with social responsibility as a key component of their identity. In 2023, Levi’s announced in a press release it would be partnering with a company producing AI-generated models to generate more inclusive representations of models for its products.

“If you claim to say I’m inclusive and I respect all the body sizes and then you use AI instead of using a real human, like a model, that’s just kind of a decrease of brand effort,” Wang said.

Beyond visual advertisements, Wang finds that consumers are averse to AI-generated product descriptions.

“You’re trying to just tell me the truth about a product, why do you need AI there?” Wang said. “Product-wise, people just want to see a real picture of the product with the truth.”

While some consumers may raise their fists at AI-generated advertisements or product descriptions, there is a reason brands may go that route, according to Wang. AI-generated content could be a cost saving measure.

“For a designer, you may pay like $6,000, $7,000 per month. But for an AI tool you just pay $20 per month and they can generate whatever and they are 24/7 available,” Wang said.

For smaller brands with less financial resources, AI-generated materials can be a viable option, or even an inevitable path to saving money on advertising. But for larger, wealthier brands there might be less commercial incentive to create genuine, personal and impactful advertising using generative-AI.

At the beginning of November, Coca-Cola released its second AI-generated ad, reaching consumers with a holiday theme.

“Coca-Cola is an international brand, so financially healthy, and they should have enough money and enough budget to make a classic advertisement,” Wang said. “But instead, they use AI.”

One of the most appealing things about advertising, said Wang, is the personalization and advertiser’s motivation to delve into the consumer psyche and find what draws them to a product.

“AI itself, it doesn't have emotion. It doesn’t have any motivator, any initiative to understand what a human is thinking or feeling at that moment,” Wang said. “Generally it cannot have any truly insightful advertising idea to attract people’s attention or make people feel related.”

On the flip side, some products are advertising their AI integrations. Some researchers are trying to figure out whether showcasing “artificial intelligence” in products is a value add or turn off for consumers.

Dogan Gursoy, a professor at the Carson College of Business at Washington State University, coauthored a study published in 2024 that investigated how using the term “Artificial Intelligence” in a product’s description impacted people’s trust in the product and, subsequently, their desire to purchase it.

“The way companies are marketing AI, they think that if they put AI in the description or in the ad then it will have a positive effect on consumers,” Gursoy said. “But the reality is it may not be for many different types of products and services.”

In the study, researchers asked participants to respond to product descriptions for a car and a TV, split into two groups with one description describing the respective products as “AI-powered” and the other as “new technology.”

“Whenever we mentioned AI, intention to purchase a product went down compared to when we mentioned the ‘high tech,’” Gursoy said.

Gursoy and his fellow researchers found that consumers generally lacked emotional trust in AI. Participants were especially concerned about the integration of generative AI into high-risk products, like an illness diagnosis tool. According to Gursoy, when confronted with AI-powered products, some customers could also fear for their data privacy.

A different study published in 2025 found that numerous generative-AI assistants store and share personal data, at times unbeknownst to the user.

To alleviate consumer concerns, Gursoy suggested companies explicitly describe how integrating AI tools into their product will be of use to consumers rather than just throwing in the term artificial intelligence without explaining the purpose.

“They need to go a step or two further and frame the message positively — how can it benefit me as a consumer?” Gursoy said.

On top of specifying the benefits of adding an AI-powered aspect to a product, Gursoy recommended companies address data privacy and security concerns.

“We use these things at home,” Gursoy said. “So people need to be sure that their privacy is not going to be violated and companies will respect their privacy.”

Companies should assure consumers that their AI-powered devices are not listening to or recording their conversations without permission, according to Gursoy.

So that cursor, instead of clicking on the “Add to Cart” button, might be closing out of the tab and leaving the AI-powered trinket with an AI-generated description behind.

This story was produced by Pangram and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.