Faces of the Future, Feelings of the Present: Using AI Without Losing the Audience

The rise of generative AI has introduced a paradox for modern marketers. On one hand, brands face increasing pressure to produce more content, faster and with higher degrees of personalization. On the other, audiences are becoming more discerning, rejecting synthetic experiences that feel soulless or inauthentic. The conversation has shifted from whether AI can generate content to whether audiences trust it when it does.

WongDoody's latest research on how people perceive AI-generated humans in advertising, Faces of the Future, confirms the tension. Our study found that AI-generated humans often passed visual muster. But once participants learned those faces weren't real, trust plummeted. This wasn't about technical quality. It was about emotional credibility. People don't just want content that looks real. They want it to feel real.

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The Trust Gap Is Growing

This July, the trust gap surrounding AI-generated content broke wide open. An AI influencer with over 165,000 followers was revealed to be fake. MSN reported widespread backlash, not because of the visuals, but because audiences felt misled. As our study echoed, people were fine with AI-generated imagery until they realized it wasn’t real. Then trust unraveled.

In a more dramatic example, Vogue recently faced intense backlash for publishing a fashion spread composed entirely of AI-generated models. The reaction, reported by Forbes, has been swift and unforgiving. Readers call the imagery soulless, tone-deaf, and devoid of the human creativity that fashion is built on. It’s a textbook example of what not to do: Injecting AI without creative context, transparency, or narrative alignment.

And while some brands stumbled in their use of synthetic media, others leaned into a different path. The Interline and Plastics Engineering highlighted how designers and creatives are embracing analog techniques, strategic imperfection, and tactile visuals to push back on over-automation. These stories don’t reference AI-generated humans directly, but they reflect the broader cultural undercurrent driving demand for authentic, human-feeling content, especially from younger audiences.

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It’s Not About AI vs. Human. It’s About Intent.

Authenticity today isn’t about choosing between people and machines. It’s about how thoughtfully we use the tools at our disposal. When AI is applied with intention and guided by human insight, creative strategy, and brand context, it becomes a force multiplier, not a shortcut.

What audiences are responding to is clarity of purpose. When synthetic content is integrated into campaigns with clear boundaries and narrative consistency, it doesn’t erode trust. It can enhance it, especially in cases like product visualization, dynamic localization, or future-forward storytelling.

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What Scaled Authenticity Looks Like

Brands don’t need to abandon automation to stay emotionally resonant. What they need is a more thoughtful approach to how content is created and deployed.That might mean using digital twins to prototype faster, tapping AI to produce consistent campaign assets globally, or building creative systems that adapt to audience needs in real time.

The key is keeping the audience in mind at every step. Automation can increase content velocity, but emotional impact comes from how you wield that speed. Strategic use of AI doesn’t replace craft but amplifies it.

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Building Trust Through Transparency

Our research found that disclosure matters. People were more accepting of AI-generated content when they knew what it was and why it was used. Context changes perception, and perception shapes trust.

For marketers, this means being clear about where and how AI is being used, particularly in emotionally sensitive or human-centric campaigns. Transparency isn’t just a compliance checkbox. It’s a creative tool that signals respect for your audience.

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The Path Forward

In a landscape flooded with content, speed alone isn’t enough. What sets great brands apart is their ability to scale with intention and design for trust. That means rethinking not just what we make with AI, but why and how we make it. Because in a world where nearly anything can be generated, how you choose to create becomes your most powerful differentiator. Explore our Faces of the Future study to understand what today’s audiences expect from brands in an AI-driven world.

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