Consumers don’t want to hear about your AI

WordPress VIP just dropped a survey that should make every marketer pause. Sixty percent of U.S. consumers say seeing “AI” in brand messaging makes them less likely to buy. Not neutral. Less likely.

This isn’t a small sample either. The survey polled over 1,000 U.S. adults and 500 business decision-makers, so the numbers carry weight.

Here’s the irony: while consumers are rolling their eyes at AI mentions, companies are doubling down on AI-powered search as a referral channel. WordPress VIP’s own platform is built around this stuff. They’re essentially saying “we know you hate hearing about it, but we’re betting you’ll use it anyway.”

I’ve been watching this tension play out for a while. The tech industry has this habit of falling in love with a term and then beating it to death in every press release, product launch, and email campaign. “AI-powered this” and “machine learning that” get slapped on everything like a badge of honor. But regular people? They associate AI with chatbots giving wrong answers, spammy content generation, and the creeping sense that nothing on the internet is written by a human anymore.

The survey drilled down into specifics. When asked about AI-generated content, 55% of consumers said they trust it less than human-written content. Only 12% said they trust it more. That’s a brutal split. And it gets worse: 48% said they’d stop visiting a website if they found out it used AI-generated content without disclosure.

But here’s the part that actually surprised me. When the same consumers were told AI was being used for behind-the-scenes tasks—like personalizing recommendations or optimizing load times—the negativity dropped significantly. The problem isn’t AI itself. It’s the way brands talk about it.

“AI” has become marketing noise. Consumers hear it and think “you’re cutting costs” or “you’re replacing human workers.” They don’t hear “better experience.” They hear “we don’t want to pay writers.”

The survey also found that 72% of business leaders believe AI search will be an important referral channel within two years. That’s almost three-quarters of decision-makers betting big on something their customers openly distrust. The disconnect is staggering.

So what’s the play here? If you’re a brand, maybe stop leading with “AI” in your messaging. Let the technology do its work in the background. Improve the product, make the experience smoother, and let customers notice the results without having to announce it.

WordPress VIP is in an awkward position here—they’re selling enterprise content platforms that increasingly rely on AI, but their own survey shows their customers’ customers hate hearing about it. They’re not stupid. They published this data anyway, which tells me they understand the problem and are looking for a way through it.

The takeaway is simple: consumers don’t care about your tech stack. They care about whether your content is useful, trustworthy, and human. If you have to tell people you’re using AI, you’re probably doing it wrong.