Lippincott, a global brand, experience, design and marketing consultancy, shared the results of a consumer study that shows, despite widespread investment in AI, most consumers don’t trust today’s biggest brands when it comes to the technology and are unwilling to pay a premium for AI offerings.
According to data gathered from over 11,000 U.S. respondents across 146 brands representing 12 industries, the survey indicates that consumers are both skeptical and underwhelmed by AI offerings. Additionally, they are less willing to pay for AI features, with only 7 percent willing to pay more, and 57 percent expecting to pay the same.
“Though it may seem paradoxical, brands must find authenticity in the artificial to earn consumer trust,” said Chris Ciompi, a Senior Partner in Lippincott’s Marketing and Customer Strategy practice. “AI features are table stakes if only 7 percent of consumers are willing to pay more for them. Without revenue gains to harvest from new AI offerings, brands will need to capture something else of value from consumers – potentially first-party data, increased share of wallet, higher engagement, lower cost to serve, or lower likelihood to attrite.”
Other key findings from the survey include:
- Distrust doesn’t belong to any one age group. Distrust across generations is steady, with only 24 percent of 18-24 year-olds trusting brands to use AI tools, and 18 percent of those 65 years and older feeling the same.
- A lack of transparency can further weaken trust. 46 percent of people trust a brand less if they learned that the brand was using AI to provide services they assumed were coming from a human.
- Many consumers are underwhelmed. Only 29 percent of people think that their experiences with AI have lived up to their expectations of it.
- But AI is already becoming table stakes. 57 percent of people expect brands to use AI to improve their products, services, and customer experience, and 52 percent don’t perceive brands using AI as any more innovative than those that don’t.
“Currently, AI comes with confusion and distrust, no matter how old you are,” said David Pianin, a partner in Lippincott’s Marketing and Customer Strategy practice. “This isn’t just a Boomer problem, considering only 24 percent of 18-24 year olds trust brands to use AI tools effectively. Building that trust requires brands to focus more on promoting AI’s benefits than the technology itself and relating those benefits to the brand’s positioning, always reinforcing its clear and meaningful role in people’s lives.”
Lippincott offers four key principles for brand building in the age of AI:
- You’re more excited about AI than your customers are: People are often skeptical and underwhelmed by AI. Jumping on the bandwagon before you’re ready can do more harm than good. So, get ready. Develop a strategy for how and when AI will become part of your brand’s DNA.
- To earn consideration, first build trust. People don’t buy things they don’t trust to deliver. There is a wide range in the trust that brands have earned in delivering AI, but almost no brand is more than 50 percent trusted when it comes to AI features and offerings. You can make the difference by knowing exactly what your customer wants from AI and delivering exactly that – authentically and transparently.
- Ask yourself: reinforce or reinvent? Not everything that is AI needs to be a brand. AI can help move your brand forward by infusing new attributes and creating new entry points. Or, AI can help reinforce who you already are by operating behind the scenes.
- An AI persona can be powerful, but it’s not for every brand: An AI’s personality must be authentic and consistent to build trust. Some brands have the license and ability to establish human personas to build trust. Other brands find it more authentic to position the AI clearly as a bot.
“At Lippincott, we’re playing with AI to understand how it affects every aspect of the brand experience,” said Tom Ajello, Senior Partner and Global Director of Experience at Lippincott. “We’re not just exploring for ourselves—we’re helping our clients find their own AI crossroads, where innovation meets purpose. By working together, we can create authentic, trustworthy AI experiences that enhance the human connection. That’s the kind of transformative work that excites me.”
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