Marketers are adopting AI for customer-facing content at nearly universal rates - 97% of marketing leaders use it in daily creative work, according to Canva's State of Marketing report, and 99% plan to increase AI investment this year. But consumer skepticism is rising in tandem: Gartner found in June that 49% of U.S. consumers think AI has made content quality worse, a figure that jumps to 57% among Gen Z and millennials. The result is a new set of brand rules around when AI-generated imagery is acceptable, and when it risks alienating the audience it's meant to reach.
Some brands are finding that AI's value lies in what it can do that film crews can't. Plant-based beverage brand Koia used AI to create larger-than-life, animated content for its protein powder launch at Costco, generating 48,000 organic views - about 6.4 times its normal Instagram Reels performance. Diane DiLorenzo, Koia's VP of marketing, said the surreal aesthetic is part of the appeal.
"In those situations, everyone knows it's AI, and I think that's another reason why performance is good," she said. "People are engaging with it and not feeling deceived."
AI as a content multiplier
For many companies, the biggest win is turning existing assets into more ads without booking another shoot. Shuttlerock, a creative services firm, worked with Hilton to apply AI-powered image-to-video technology to past footage. The resulting travel ads drove a 42% increase in people reached, an 8% return on ad spend, and 13% more bookings - without the expense of re-shooting at 700 properties.
Mack Reynolds, Shuttlerock's SVP of global creative strategy and a former Meta creative strategy lead, said the approach allows brands to feed more variations to ad platforms and improve the odds of showing the right ad to the right person. "You can just update a few elements of it. It doesn't change anything material about the item, just the treatment of it or the music or the voice-over," he said.
Goodwipes, a personal care brand, uses AI to optimize visuals from past photo shoots. Meredith Diehn, SVP of marketing, said the approach saves money on shoot days and that click-through rates on AI-created content run above industry averages. "We're a small team, both from a people and resources standpoint. So if AI is a tool that can help with execution, why not use it?" she said. "That way, my team can focus more on the creative ideas and the things AI can't do."
Larger players are seeing similar gains. Unilever reported its AI Studio develops creative assets 30% faster, and in one case its oral-care brand Closeup produced more than 100 assets across 10 setups in three days. Unilever also said AI-generated content has doubled key metrics like video completion and click-through rates compared to human-made versions.
Where brands draw the line
Nearly every marketer interviewed for this story said they avoid AI-generated people entirely. Goodwipes, for instance, is comfortable with static AI imagery of products but won't use AI actors. Diehn explained why: "We're talking about wiping your butt; there's an intimacy there. If you have an AI person telling you to trust them with something intimate, do you really trust them?"
Koia similarly hasn't used AI-generated actors in ads. DiLorenzo warned against relying on AI in ways that produce generic or copycat content, which risks diluting a brand's message. "It's important for the brand to uphold their own brand guidelines and make sure there is a distinct point of view," she said.
Some brands avoid customer-facing AI altogether. Gozney, a high-end pizza oven brand, uses AI only for drafting processes, not in consumer content. Jonathan Kantor, Gozney's chief marketing officer, said the brand's YouTube channel - with hundreds of thousands of subscribers - depends on authentic, premium content. "When you have a highly engaged customer, and you're a premium brand, AI is a little bit more of a risk," he said. "It's great if brands gain efficiencies and scale to some extent, but if the quality of the work is not there, and it's not paired with real, true human craft, it's not going to land with the consumer."
Brands that get AI wrong face public backlash. REI drew criticism this summer for an AI-generated ad showing a woman with a bicycle that had two sets of handlebars. Quip faced calls for a potentially AI-generated surreal campaign earlier this year, even though the brand said it didn't use AI for the imagery.
Guardrails for creative work
Reynolds said brands should treat AI as a production tool, not a strategy engine. "Having a brand point of view on your role in people's lives, and your personality, and your voice, is still the most important thing. And the AI and the tooling you're using shouldn't be dictating that back to you," he said.
He recommends using AI to make content faster, more relevant, and at a higher quality than the brand could otherwise afford - not to generate the creative direction itself. "Don't sacrifice the storytelling," he said. "Stay true to who you are, but try out a lot of expressions of that and let the creative find the people who are going to tell you what's most resonant."
For marketers, the practical question is not whether to use AI but where. The brands succeeding with it apply it to the mid- and lower-funnel content that needs volume - product shots, ad variations, social clips - while keeping human judgment in the strategy, the concept, and anything where trust is on the line. AI for Marketing training can help teams build those boundaries deliberately, and Generative Video courses cover the technical skills behind the ad variations and image-to-video work that brands like Hilton and Unilever are already using.
Why this matters for marketers
The gap between AI's efficiency gains and consumer trust is the central tension of the moment. Marketers who treat AI as a cost-saving shortcut risk producing content that audiences reject. Those who treat it as a production multiplier - refreshing catalog assets, generating variations, creating surreal or animated visuals that clearly aren't real - can get the efficiency without the backlash. The brands making it work have one thing in common: they know their brand voice first and fit AI around it, not the other way around.
Your membership also unlocks:
