As companies race to stamp 'AI' on every product, press release, and ad campaign, their customers are increasingly put off by the word itself. In a WordPress VIP survey published this week, 60% of US consumers said a brand using 'AI' in its messaging is a turnoff. The same survey found 86% do not fully trust AI and still want to explore original sources, and 42% said they trust AI-generated answers that lack clear attribution less than they trust airline fees, confusing privacy policies, or medical bills, three things almost nobody associates with goodwill.
The discontent runs deeper than marketing copy. Nearly three in four respondents said the internet feels less human than it did ten years ago, a sentiment that lands at an awkward moment for an industry pouring billions into making the web more machine-mediated, not less. The survey's throughline is that transparency and attribution have become things consumers actively value, and that slapping 'AI' on a brand reads to many of them as a warning label rather than a feature.
One survey is one survey, but this one is not an outlier. A Gartner marketing survey in March 2026 found 50% of consumers prefer brands that avoid using generative AI in consumer-facing content, and a separate Clutch study put the share who react negatively to AI in branding at 33%. Across different firms and methodologies, the same shape keeps appearing: a meaningful chunk of the public has moved from curiosity about AI to wariness of it as a marketing signal, even as adoption of the underlying tools keeps climbing.
The tension is the story. The labs and the brands that buy their models are racing to make AI visible everywhere, in search results, product names, and campaigns, at the same moment a large share of consumers is telling pollsters that visibility is exactly what turns them off. The honest caveats: these are attitude surveys, not purchase data, and what people say about 'AI' branding may not match what they actually buy or use. But the consistency across WordPress VIP, Gartner, and Clutch is hard to wave away, and it points at something the trust debate keeps circling back to this month: the public is starting to treat 'AI' less as a promise and more as a thing that needs to be disclosed. The brands that win the next stretch may be the ones that deliver the capability quietly and say 'AI' the least.