Fortunately for brands, the jury is still out on whether consumers want to see them leverage AI in public efforts. Two in five (39%) of respondents support brands using generative AI tools to make ads. Only 12% oppose this use of generative AI, while half (49%) remain neutral. What this means is that marketers still have the opportunity to sway a large swath of consumers on this issue.
Related: Watch Mint Mobile's ad created with ChatGPT
Persuasion begins with education, said Dr. Charles Taylor, a professor of marketing at the Villanova School of Business. Brands should focus on showing consumers what generative AI is capable of doing, while monitoring which practices make people uncomfortable, such as the intersection of AI and customer data and what that implies about their privacy.
Thus far, many brands that have adopted popular tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 have done so in rather showy ways, promoting their use to consumers as if to merely demonstrate their cultural savviness. This is a risky move, Dr. Taylor said, because the value to consumers is ambiguous. Even worse, it could reinforce an underlying concern that society is losing its human touch.
“If a brand is just toying with the technology for the sake of publicity, this plays into fears rather than shows any positive use cases,” said Dr. Taylor.