Canva’s State of Marketing report puts AI in the daily creative work of 97% of marketing leaders. Gartner found in June 2026 that 49% of U.S. consumers think AI has made content quality worse, rising to 57% among Gen Z and millennials. REI came under fire in the summer of 2026 from commenters who roasted an AI-generated ad showing a woman with a bicycle that had two sets of handlebars.
Where the tools are earning their place, it is often on footage that already exists. Shuttlerock ran Hilton’s existing assets through AI image-to-video for travel ads on Meta, and reported a 42% increase in people reached, an 8% return on ad spend and 13% more bookings, without re-shooting 700 properties. Unilever has said that its AI Studio develops creative assets 30% faster, and that AI-generated content can outperform its human-made equivalents, with video completion and click-through rates doubling. Koia, a plant-based protein beverage brand, used AI for a Costco protein powder launch that drew 48,000 organic views, roughly 6.4 times what it normally gets on Instagram Reels. “In those situations, everyone knows it’s AI, and I think that’s another reason why performance is good,” said Diane DiLorenzo, the brand’s vp of marketing. “People are engaging with it and not feeling deceived.”
The line most of these brands draw is at synthetic people. Goodwipes uses static AI imagery of people and will not use AI-generated actors. “We’re talking about a really personal activity; we’re talking about wiping your butt,” said Meredith Diehn, its svp of marketing. “If you have an AI person talking to you about something that’s intimate, do you really trust them? Potentially not.” DiLorenzo watches for sameness: brands running the same tools into the same fonts, aesthetics and jokes.
Gozney keeps AI in drafting and out of anything a customer sees. The pizza-oven brand crossed $100 million in revenue in 2025 and sells products that cost four figures against a consideration period of about 30 days; chief revenue and marketing officer Jonathan Kantor rates the risk of being associated with “AI slop” above the efficiency on offer. One of its larger campaigns in 2026 was a partnership with the paint brand Tonester, for which the team built a set and doused the products in limited-edition colors. People asked Kantor which AI they had used.
Read more at Digiday.
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