Brands are rapidly deploying artificial intelligence for marketing and customer-facing advertising content. Yet most establish guardrails around how they use it. Modern Retail reported that marketers face pressure to balance AI's efficiency gains against mounting consumer skepticism. According to Canva data cited by Modern Retail, 97% of marketing leaders now use AI in their daily creative work. 99% plan to increase AI investment this year.
Consumer sentiment poses a significant constraint on AI adoption. Gartner found that 49% of U.S. consumers believe AI has made content quality worse, a proportion rising to 57% among Gen Z and millennials, while REI faced social media backlash over an AI-generated advertisement of a woman with a bicycle that featured two sets of handlebars. Even brands that do not use AI can suffer if audiences suspect they do, Modern Retail noted.
The most effective applications involve content creation that would be impossible or prohibitively expensive to film. Koia, a plant-based beverage brand, used AI-generated imagery for its Costco protein powder launch designed to look animated and larger-than-life, generating 48,000 organic Instagram views, about 6.4 times the brand's typical engagement. Unilever's AI Studio produces creative assets 30% faster than traditional methods, and the company has found that AI-generated content sometimes outperforms human-created work on metrics including video completion rates and click-through rates.
Major retailers are also using AI to expand paid-social reach and reduce production costs. Hilton and Meta deployed AI-powered image-to-video technology in travel advertisements, driving a 42% increase in people reached and yielding 13% more bookings while avoiding the expense of re-shoots at 700 properties. Goodwipes uses AI to optimize visuals from existing photo shoots, substantially reducing production overhead. Brands setting boundaries remains common: some use static AI imagery but avoid AI-generated actors in customer-facing roles.