Science reveals the high risk of repulsing customers with AI-driven content

From small start-ups to some of the biggest brands in the world, it feels like every business on the planet nowadays is incorporating AI into its content creation and marketing efforts. The pros are obvious, but new research just conducted at the New York Institute of Technology warns brands of all kinds must be very careful while implementing AI throughout marketing efforts. The wrong approach can backfire among consumers in a big way. Read on to learn more.

Is mixing automation and emotion a good idea?

Researchers set out to better understand how consumers (people) react to emotionally charged marketing content created by AI. Recent developments in generative AI now allow companies to automate the production of entirely unique promotional materials featuring text, images, videos, or audio. The scenes mustered up by these programs may attempt to tug at viewers’ heart strings in any number of ways. For instance, one recent AI-produced Toys “R” Us commercial showed the company’s founder as a young child beside brand mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe. 

But do people really connect with emotional content they know was “thought up” by a computer program? That’s the main question researchers set out to answer.

“AI is a new territory for brand marketers, but what we do know is that consumers highly value authentic interactions with brands,” says lead study author Colleen Kirk, D.P.S., professor of marketing and management at New York Institute of Technology, in a media release. “Although more companies are now using AI-generated content to strengthen brand engagement and attachment, no study has explored how consumers view the authenticity of textual content that was created by a robot.”

Kirk, alongside study co-author Julian Givi, Ph.D., a marketing researcher and faculty member at West Virginia University, hypothesized people would tend to view emotionally charged AI-generated content less favorably, negatively influencing their perception of the brand and subsequent desires (if any) to interact with it. To test their theory, researchers put together a number of experiments aimed at examining how the public reacts to AI-written messages containing emotion.

AI plus emotion leads to moral disgust

One experiment asked participants to imagine they had been given a heartfelt message from a fitness salesperson who recently helped them buy a new set of weights. The message generally conveyed that he was inspired by the consumer’s purchase. Here’s the catch: some study subjects believed the message was AI-generated while others believed the salesman drafted it himself (control cohort). 

Sure enough, those in the AI cohort reported feeling like the automated note violated their moral principles, evoking feelings of moral disgust. The control group, on the other hand, generally responded favorably to the message.

It’s also important to note that those in the AI cohort were unlikely to recommend the store to others and more likely to switch brands during future shopping trips. Many participants in the AI cohort even rated the store poorly on a simulated reviews site.

AI viewed more positively when it sticks to facts 

This research project also uncovered a number of additional interesting and noteworthy findings regarding how people perceive AI-generated content. Let’s take a look: 

• AI-generated factual communications (as opposed to communications conveying emotions) were deemed less likely to elicit moral disgust, reduce positive word of mouth, and lower brand loyalty.

• AI-generated messages in which the robot appears self-autonomous (for instance, an AI-generated memo signed by “The Summit Apparel AI Chatbot”) were perceived more positively than AI-generated messages signed by a human company representative.

• When participants believed that most emotional marketing communications were created by AI, they expressed disgust. Meanwhile, the reverse held true when they believed most communications were written by a human. Thus, study authors posit brands may benefit from promoting the human origins of their products and promotions.

• When messaging was simply edited, but not written by AI, content was less penalized for authenticity.

• Human communicators encountered a greater “authenticity penalty” if caught copying emotional content.

AI & emotion: Brands should tread lightly 

All in all, study authors believe their work strongly indicates that any company considering AI should carefully decide how to implement automated messaging and communications. They suggest prioritizing authenticity across all consumer interactions. The governments of the world continue to seek stricter regulation of AI disclosure, which means people are only going to become more aware of how brands are utilizing AI in the future.

“Consumers are becoming ever more skeptical of the human origin of marketing communications. Our research provides much-needed insight into how using AI to generate emotional content could negatively impact brands’ perceptions and, in turn, the consumer relationships that support their bottom lines,” Prof. Kirk concludes. “While AI tools offer marketers a new frontier, these professionals should bear in mind a time-tested principle: authenticity is always best.”