Grapevine

Do customers perceive AI-written communications as less authentic?

From Nike and Google to Coca-Cola and McDonald's, major brands are incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into their advertising campaigns. But how do consumers feel about robots generating emotionally charged marketing content? That's the question a New York Institute of Technology professor raises in a new Journal of Business Research study.

Whereas predictive AI allows marketers to forecast consumer behavior, generative AI enables them to produce novel content, including text, images, videos, or audio. For example, a recent AI-generated Toys "R" Us commercial featured video content of the company's founder as a boy alongside its brand mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe.

While many brands have trumpeted their AI-driven campaigns as a mark of innovation, others may fail to disclose AI use, leading to ethical concerns and calls for government regulation. However, even transparent brands receive backlash, as Google experienced when viewers were offended by its "Dear Sydney" ad, in which a father uses AI to help his daughter draft a fan letter to her favorite Olympic athlete.

"AI is a new territory for brand marketers, but what we do know is that consumers highly value authentic interactions with brands," says the study's lead author Colleen Kirk, D.P.S., professor of marketing and management at New York Institute of Technology. "Although more companies are now using AI-generated content to strengthen brand engagement and attachment, no study has explored how consumers view the authenticity of textual content that was created by a robot."

Kirk and her study co-author, Julian Givi, Ph.D., a marketing researcher and faculty member at West Virginia University, completed various experiments to see how consumers react when emotional messages are written by AI. They hypothesized that consumers would view emotionally charged AI-generated content less favorably, impacting their perception of the brand and desire to interact with it.