Brands are establishing clear guardrails around AI use in customer-facing content as adoption accelerates but consumer skepticism grows. According to Canva's State of Marketing report, 97% of marketing leaders use AI in daily creative work, and 99% planned to increase AI investment this year. However, Gartner found that 49% of U.S. consumers think AI has made content quality worse, with that figure rising to 57% among Gen Z and millennials. High-profile missteps—such as REI's AI-generated ad featuring a woman with two sets of bicycle handlebars—have exposed the risks of AI-generated imagery.
Leading brands are deploying AI strategically in three primary ways: enhancing product photography and creating templates for social ads; refreshing existing content libraries to reduce production costs; and generating impossible-to-film creative like dream sequences or animated products. Unilever's AI Studio develops creative assets 30% faster than traditional methods, and in one case study, the oral-care brand Closeup produced over 100 assets across 10 different setups in three days. Shuttlerock's work with Hilton and Meta using AI-powered image-to-video technology drove a 42% increase in people reached, yielding an 8% ROAS and 13% more bookings. However, many brands avoid using AI-generated actors or humans in customer-facing ads, fearing loss of trust and authenticity in intimate product categories.
For commerce practitioners, the takeaway is clear: AI works best as a refinement and scaling tool, not a replacement for human creativity and brand strategy. Brands that maintain a distinct point of view, use AI to amplify rather than define their message, and keep production quality high will differentiate themselves as AI-generated content becomes ubiquitous. Premium and direct-to-consumer brands are increasingly betting on real, human-crafted content as a competitive advantage in a saturated AI landscape.