A survey of 2,000 people in the U.S., split between everyday consumers and senior business decision-makers, finds that 60% of consumers consider it a negative signal when a brand uses the word 'AI' in its marketing. That number alone is worth pausing on.
The survey, conducted in April by WordPress VIP, also found that 86% of consumers do not fully trust AI-generated answers and still want to see the original source. For context, 42% said they trust AI answers without clear source attribution less than they trust airline fee disclosures or medical bills. That is a very low bar.
Nearly three in four respondents said the internet feels less human than it did ten years ago. Consumers are noticing what brands are doing, and they do not like it.
Here is the structural problem underneath this. Google now shows AI-written summaries at the top of many search results pages, answering questions before the user ever visits a website. Research from Ahrefs found that when these summaries appear, the number of people clicking through to the actual top-ranked website drops by 58%. Before these summaries existed, reaching the top of Google was the goal. Now, reaching the top no longer guarantees traffic the way it once did.
Traffic from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's Gemini grew by over 700% in 2025. But the raw numbers stay small: traditional Google search still sends roughly 191 billion visits to websites per month, while all AI platforms combined sent about 1.1 billion in mid-2025. The growth rate is real; the current volume is still modest.
There is one exception worth noting. Research from Seer Interactive found that websites actually cited inside AI summaries earn 35% more organic clicks than those not cited. Being mentioned inside the AI answer, rather than just sitting below it, appears to protect traffic.
This creates a specific kind of pressure for businesses. You need your content to be clear and credible enough that AI tools pull from it and cite you. And you need the human visitors who do click through to land on something that feels genuinely written for them, not assembled by a machine.
The data on consumer trust outside this single survey is mixed. A separate Optimove study found 57% of consumers say they trust brands more when AI is part of the experience, while Klaviyo's research put the share of consumers who completely trust AI at just 13%. The difference likely comes down to what question you ask: using AI sensibly in the background is one thing; shouting about it in your headline is another.
The practical read is this. Consumers are not opposed to AI existing inside your business. They are opposed to being marketed at with it. Transparency about sources builds trust; labelling everything 'AI-powered' destroys it. And with Google summarising more queries without sending traffic to anyone, the businesses that get cited as a source are in a structurally better position than those chasing clicks the old way.