The fastest change happening in AI right now is not that AI can make more things. We already know that. The real change is that audiences are learning to spot AI, judge AI users and ask why a brand used AI instead in the first place.
For brands, AI is moving from experimentation into the actual creative process. Recent research by digital advertising trade organization IAB found that 83% of ad execs say their company has deployed AI in creative work, up from 60% in 2024. It also found that 86% of video buyers use or plan to use generative AI to build video ad creative.
But once people believe AI has been used for a creative task, they start looking for the reason why — especially if they’re anxious about the potential for AI to replace creative people. Was AI used to make the idea more creative, or to tell a story that could not have been told otherwise? Or was it just used to save money?
That last question is where trust gets a gut check. When AI is framed mainly as a cheaper way to make creative assets, audiences notice and may not like it. When AI is used to extend a concept, sharpen personalization or make an asset more creative, the work has a better chance of feeling unique instead of being branded as “AI slop.”
Consumers: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
The Trust Gap Between Personal Use and Brand Use
In 2026, this is the tension brands are living in. Consumers are becoming more open to AI in their own lives, but they’re still very cautious about how companies are using it.
Accenture’s Consumer Pulse research, based on 18,000 consumers in 14 countries, found that 72% of consumers use generative AI tools. Even so, Ipsos’ 2025 AI Monitor, a 30-country study, found that only 48% of people trust companies that use AI to keep their data safe.
Ipsos also reported that consumers are split on whether they would trust a brand more or less for using AI to create product images, reviews and descriptive copy. In other words, consumers might be perfectly happy to use AI themselves, but may still turn their nose up if a company uses it to reach them.
The Work Still Has to Work
How Audiences Detect AI-Generated Content
Some of the skepticism around AI is about jobs. Some is about privacy or the feeling uneasy about “the rise of the machines.” But a non-zero portion of the skepticism is about taste.
People can smell generic, cookie-cutter content. Many have learned to look for the strange quirks of AI-generated creative: six-fingered hands or the signposts that say you’ve entered the linguistic uncanny valley, littered with unnecessary em dashes.
As human beings, we seem to instinctually know when art is glossy but empty, when copy is so smoothed it doesn’t stick, when perfect execution has no pulse behind it.
The best advice: use AI, but keep people in charge as arbiters of taste. If you’re using AI copy or creative work straight out of the toaster, people will notice and judge you for it.
AI as a Ladder
Creative People + AI Tools = Better Output
Creators are giving brands another clue on how to use AI and still retain trust. Adobe’s 2025 global survey of more than 16,000 creators found that 86% actively use generative AI, while 81% say it helps them create content they could not have made otherwise.
The lesson from that is clear: it’s not “replace creative people with AI.” It’s: “give creative people AI tools, and they’ll use them to be even more creative.”
For all the nervousness about job loss from AI, creators have clearly embraced it as a kind of everyday superpower, giving them the ability to take their creativity to new places or create more incredible things in less time.
The strongest brand teams treat AI the same way: as a stepstool to help human talent reach higher, not as a cost-effective way to replace it. Put a creative task in front of an AI-fluent copywriter, researcher or graphic designer who knows what the technology does well and what it doesn’t, and they can often turn it into something exponentially better than they could alone, often in a fraction of time.
What This Means for Your Brand
At mhp.si, we see AI’s potential as bigger than speed or how fast it can replace people. Put the things talented, creative humans can do with the things AI can do, and you have a system that can help brands listen more closely, research more deeply, present themselves more authentically and bring better ideas into the world.
Ready to find out what mhp.si can do for your business with AI? Reach out today.