Awareness of the long-standing generalized anti-AI sentiment has turned a corner, as according to an advertising insider report, consumers, particularly the all-important younger cohorts, are so strongly biased against the use of AI that it’s threatening the proverbial bottom line.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau, which, according to its website, “empowers the media and marketing industries to thrive in the digital economy,” released a report in January stating that “82% of ad executives believe Gen Z/Millennial consumers feel very or somewhat positive about AI-generated ads, nearly double the 45% of consumers who actually feel that way. This gap has widened from 32 points in 2024 to 37 points in 2026.”
Even if it wasn’t holy, it was understandable. Now it comes off to more and more people as direct humiliation.
A real surprise, apparently, to executives. Despite the fact that many industries are all-in on refactoring human society with AI, it would appear that number crunchers and pollsters didn’t seriously consult those among us who prefer joy and satisfaction outside the world of lines on graphs trending upward.
Odd because the sheer quantity of articles in major publications with “AI” and “backlash” in their headlines is enough for casual pattern recognizers to take notice without even trying.
Last week, the over-the-top “luxury” brand Gucci, whose handbags double as status symbols, dropped an AI ad campaign on Instagram. The company seemed shocked by the vehemently negative response: slop, insulting, AI trash.
In fact, the reaction was so uniformly bad that, once again, many articles were written by the usual zombified outlets — the BBC, The New York Times, TIME — wherein the “backlash” is treated with almost effete surprise!
Virtually every governmental and social institution is in some red-flashing-light level of excessive decay, mostly due to an overemphasis by Western culture on the aforementioned lines going up, instead of the old standards like social, physical, and psychic well-being. But still, the consensus is shocked that young people don’t want to trade meaningful work, relationships, and systems of value for simulations thereof.
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Photo by Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Aside perhaps from the gargantuan name-brand AI companies (ChatGPT, Anthropic, Grok) buoyed by immense government funds, corporations in general, having bought the whole of the cost-savings promises of AI deployed into every level of their profit ventures, are getting nervous.
Another finding in the IAB study? “Some sentiment gaps between ad executives and consumers have actually grown wider. For instance, the percentage of consumers calling a brand “innovative” by using AI dropped from 30% in 2024 to 23%, while advertiser belief that AI signals innovation increased from 40% to 49%.”
There’s more going on. While the Gucci ads deploy a gouache collage of aesthetic dead-ends and seem to depend on their meaning for long-gone social fabric that the “creatives” don’t likely know how to manipulate anymore to drive sales, the real offense — the one that caused regular Instagram scrollers to stop and take a swipe at Gucci — is that the ads scream cheap.
The visual dexterity, the meaningless symbols, the absence of real human beings depicted in this once-aspirational fantasyland? It all adds up in the gloss to being chintzy. Unsurprisingly, this is insulting to people who have to, and want to, work for a living.
It’s one thing to create an interesting visual or audio piece while using lo-fi or primitive tools. This can impress. We know human ingenuity was expended. We appreciate the thrift, the bending of rules and the use of creative constraints to open new dimensions. And it’s possible to make ads without real people. All of this has been done before without the upheaval, without the counterassault from consumers. But consumers knew in those situations that their human-based feedback loop — strive, achieve, display — still had some social capital. Even if it wasn’t holy, it was understandable. Now it comes off to more and more people as direct humiliation.
“Bleak days,” the BBC laments, “when Gucci can’t find a real human Milanese grandmother to wear an outfit from 1976.”
Here is the double-edged issue with slop: Gucci consumers are purchasing from the striver/acquisition point of view, so their mental frame requires there be careful social and financial stratification to navigate. Even if the navigation is only an illusion. No one buys Gucci and becomes the hyper-interesting and windswept person they see in the advertisements. Of course, Gucci ad makers know and knew this, but the cost-saving opportunities with AI were too much to resist. The deal is broken.
Tech, Ai, Artificial intelligence, Ai slop