According to research by YPulse, almost 70% of young adults now use AI tools or chatbots at least weekly. But despite, or perhaps because, of AI’s widespread normalisation among young people, roughly as many Gen Zers (78%) are somewhat or very concerned by the technology and 50% think the risks outweigh the benefits. Evidently, the more they use the technology, the more they find to dislike. They’re the generation that distrusts AI the most.
But more important than the disapproval are the specific objections underpinning it, which often take shape and amass too vaguely for brands to unpack and understand individually. For example, at a slew of recent college graduations across the US, students booed and jeered the speakers if they referred to AI, even if only in a neutral light. And remarkably, this trend seemed to require no serious organisation or plan on the part of the students, emerging instead from a disapproval so deep and unanimous that hundreds of unconnected individuals booed organically and, often, spontaneously. But why exactly were they booing? And what can brands learn from that?
Novelty isn’t enough.
Most tech trends of the last fifty years were feverishly adopted by the youth of their respective eras. What distinguishes Gen Z’s adoption of AI from earlier generations’ adoption of technologies, such as the Walkman, Napster, iPod, iPhone, and social media, is that this time the young users are conflicted about it, almost immediately. Perhaps what that earlier tech has in common is a link with creativity (i.e. music) or connectivity (as in the case of iPhones and social media). At first, generative AI chatbots might’ve appealed to the young, at least partially, based on their much-publicised potential to act as an artistic collaborator – a tool with which to brainstorm and boost creativity. But headlines since have tended to focus on the opposite: AI’s propensity to limit and flatten creativity, while also isolating people. Instead of asking friends for feedback on a project or help with homework, teens are increasingly asking ChatGPT.
Historically, the youth’s embrace of new tech has acted as a major driver of its popularity and success. What millennial doesn’t remember rolling their eyes when their parents followed them onto Facebook? Now, without the endorsement of today’s young, the universal consumer adoption of AI no longer looks quite as inevitable as it did for social media. Consequently, the countless brands rushing to incorporate AI into strategies and campaigns as fast as they did Facebook and Twitter may benefit from proceeding more carefully. Brands don’t only risk alienating young audiences – they might find that older audiences, without the example of the young to follow, may fail to flock to AI endeavours too.
So far, AI adoption hasn’t required much trust on the part of consumers, because they’ve tended to use the tech for tasks and activities that don’t require much trust. They don’t need to trust an AI chatbot, particularly, if they’re asking it to make a funny image or suggest a fun recipe. That can give brands a false impression of how happy and excited consumers are to use it. But will they be as happy when a health brand asks for all their health data as part of a new AI initiative? As the tech grows more powerful – and its uses grow riskier – trust becomes proportionally more important and consumer buy-in becomes harder to win. Some brands are banking on consumer trust in AI developing at the rate of its progress but what reason are brands giving Gen Zers, and older audiences alike, to continue adopting, trusting, and supporting a new technology they increasingly dislike? Or, more to the point, why even bother persuading them to like it? What’s in it for brands?
The good, the bad, and the ugly of AI.
Unfortunately, for a lot of brands, what’s in it for them is precisely what Gen Zers dislike most about AI. AI, in theory, can slash a brand’s costs – on the production of creative assets, for instance, by as much as 95%, according to Meta – but often by slashing jobs, which at university graduations couldn’t be more at the forefront of Gen Zers’ minds. Accordingly, The Guardian’s interviews with a few of the booers found that to be at least one of the reasons for the negative response, a reason well supported by data: according to Harvard University, 59% of young people in the US view AI as a threat to their employment prospects.
The boos act as only the latest of many examples of young people undermining or rejecting AI, whether by mocking it online (with data centre memes, data centre Tweets, and slang like “clanker”) or (for a staggering 41% of Gen Z workers) by actively sabotaging their employers’ AI strategies. But the boos do underscore a new confidence in the disapproval, a safety in the knowledge that the negativity is now so uncontroversial, so undisputed, that they can express it not behind the safety of a screen, or in secret at the office, but openly in public without any risk of judgment. And yet brands persist, with Gartner finding that 77% use AI in marketing, especially for creative work.
Evidently, some brands maintain that the cost benefits outweigh the reputational risks. Indeed, history is littered with examples of new technologies, from tractors to sewing machines, loathed for their potential to decimate workforces, which has almost never stopped their proliferation and acceptance. But the relationship between the agricultural workers resentful of tractors and the produce sold by farms – first to wholesalers then to supermarkets and only then back to customers – was much less direct. Today, many of the companies using AI to cut jobs sell directly to the types of people whose jobs they’re cutting. Thus, the damage wrought by reputational risk increases. But brands can only be careful about how they use AI if they know what specifically to be careful about. Job losses are only one part of the story.
Fortunately, many of the other parts won’t be relevant to most brands. While 80% of Gen Z workers dislike how AI makes learning more difficult, for example, a brand’s use of AI is unlikely to intersect with that issue very directly. Similarly, 79% of young adults are concerned that AI will make people lazier and 65% criticise how it promotes instant gratification rather than real understanding, ranking its impairment of critical thinking skills among their biggest objections. But in the event a brand does use AI, it’s unlikely to suffer more than a vague association with these particular issues. And even then, this process of “cognitive offloading”, of outsourcing our thinking to technology, was led by search engines and few consumers would protest Google (or smartphones) for detraining our memories. Clearly, tools and brands that reduce critical thinking in exchange for efficiency can appeal to young people – and do. Young people have bought wholesale into the digital revolution, happy to forego the active reading and research once required to develop taste in favour of the frictionless ease of recommendations of music from Spotify, restaurants from Deliveroo, and everything else from Amazon… The list goes on, generating trillions of dollars annually.
Google offers a particularly interesting example, in that — while arguably contributing to that decline more than any other company – it’s managed to brand itself as a champion of education and creativity, through small touches like the Google Doodle. Creativity matters to young adults, as much historically as now; according to Pew Research Center, 61% dislike how AI will make people less creative. More broadly, the use of AI-generated images and text is often ridiculed on social media as “fake”, “uncool”, “inauthentic”, or simply as “slop”, particularly when brands use it to bypass the creative process. With that in mind, brands using AI to reduce production costs should never let that undermine creative quality – not if they want to appeal to Gen Z.
It’s the difference between a brand using AI merely to execute a creative vision at a lower cost, as seems to be the case with Coca-Cola’s AI-generated Christmas ads – widely derided as much “uglier” than their beloved human-made predecessors – and a brand using AI to do what only AI can do. Nike, for example, used the technology to analyse Serena Williams’ movements, to create a digital simulation of William to play against the real Williams, which told an emotional story about self-discipline, self-improvement, and mental growth. It avoided backlash, likely because AI enhanced the ad’s creativity, instead of hampering creatives.
Understandably, most brands are still struggling with how to use AI as wisely, without the wisdom of precedent. The point, in instances like Nike’s, is to use AI to improve creativity, not cheapen it. The problem, in part, is one of perspective: rather than view AI as a way to save money, brands would do better to view it as a way to save time. By performing the more mundane, repetitive tasks of creative work, AI could unlock more hours for creatives to focus on their creativity – so long as they aren’t fired. And positioned that way by brands, AI could potentially recover some of its early promise, appeal to Gen Zers, and be used with significantly less risk of backlash. Although, obviously, those comms would require deft, sensitive wording – not the wording of the CEO of Big Machine Records, when he responded to the boos during his graduation speech by insisting, “Deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool.” He was jeered again.
Beyond the intersecting objections to AI limiting job opportunities and creativity, Gen Zers also dislike the secrecy – even underhandedness – with which many brands use it. Research by the IPA found that 74% of consumers believe brands should disclose their use of AI-generated content, whereas only 44% of advertisers, according to different research by IAB, always make sure to do so. That puts brands in a tricky position, aware of the risk they’ll be criticised for using AI but expected to be transparent. That said, they’ll have nothing to hide if they use AI ethically and responsibly.
Another common frustration among Gen Zers is AI’s impact on society and the environment. That’s a frustration that brands can fall afoul of, because they have a choice: to use – and therefore fund – AI models with better or worse ethical and sustainability credentials. Gestures like that can make a big difference for the 91% of Gen Zers who say they want to buy from environmentally friendly companies (and the 56% who actively avoid brands that aren’t).
Choice is important to young people too. One of the aspects of AI they resent the most is the seeming imposition of its use – the lack of freedom they’re given to decide whether or not to participate. Students, for example, regularly report that their professors encourage them to use AI, even if the student doesn’t want to, because the professors believe it’s inevitable they’ll use it anyway, so they want to at least teach them to use it responsibly. That doesn’t leave students with a meaningful choice. Others report a “pressure” to use it in academic settings in order to not make more mistakes than those who do use AI, which erodes the freedom to make the mistakes necessary to learning and mastering a craft at a level, eventually, superior to AI’s. They’re forced to compete, to be perfect immediately, which compounds the pressure to be flawless that, according to a longitudinal study of 83,000 students, has accelerated dramatically over the past 35 years.
That sense of obligation stirs memories of social media, the last new technology foisted upon them without knowledge of its countless unintended negative effects. After the disaster of that unofficial experiment, they’re worried AI won’t be much better and this time they want more agency. This is a fear very relevant to brands, which ought to offer customers the option to engage in AI endeavours without making that mandatory. Prudent online shops, for example, offer chatbots as a faster alternative to human customer service representatives, not instead of them. Similarly, Google’s customers aren’t forced to search using its AI mode: they can choose for themselves whether to opt in or opt out.
Read the room.
Among the many reasons for Gen Zers’ boos, those might be the few most relevant to brands experimenting with AI: its ugly aesthetic, lack of transparency, forced adoption, environmental unfriendliness, ethical implications, and its impact on jobs and creativity. Those are the criticisms brands can do something about, at least. But while it’s less of a challenge to use AI more sustainably, transparently, creatively, and ethically, the authenticity question is harder to answer. This is a generation raised in the age of influencers, disinformation, and advertorial: in response, they’ve embraced de-influencing, activism, and BookTok – not to mention anti-filter aesthetics, vinyl, film photography, and dumbphones – all in pursuit of a realer, more authentic experience of life. So, if that’s what they prize most, can AI – no matter how a brand uses it – ever be in anything but direct conflict with Gen Zers’ values?
So far, there are very few examples to suggest otherwise. While comparing the 83% of ad executives who admit to deploying AI in the creative process with the significantly smaller number to encounter backlash does suggest it’s possible for a brand’s use of the tech to go unnoticed, the 70% of marketers reporting AI-related issues in assets (such as hallucinations, bias, or off-brand content) suggest that this situation might be a ticking time bomb. And given those AI-related issues, and the lack of major success stories outside of the tech space, unless a brand has a truly worthy and urgent reason for using AI, for now the tech’s only major benefit – cost savings – might not justify the risk. B2B brands risk less, and to compete tech brands need to embrace new tech, but for most public-facing brands – more dependent than the former on mass sentiment and without the latter’s natural link to AI – the wholesale use of AI at this nascent stage of its development remains something of a gamble, especially when wielded without empathy, cultural saviness, and anthropological understanding.
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