The AI Disclosure Paradox: Damned If You Tell, Damned If You Don't
4 MIN READ
Picture a marketing team somewhere, cursor hovering over a little button that reads "AI-assisted." Checking it feels like the right thing to do, but it also feels like handing the customer a reason to like them just a little bit less. Leaving it unchecked might seem easier, but that not only feels yucky, it’s also bound to bite you in the ass. No matter what they decide to do, someone will be upset.
That's the bind nearly every DTC brand is sitting in right now, and the rather unsettling research on it isn’t helping. A pair of researchers ran thirteen experiments to see what happens when people admit to using AI and found that those who disclosed were trusted less than those who said nothing. From a professor who mentioned AI-assisted grading to a fund that disclosed AI-prepared reports, coming clean cost every one of them.
Does that mean honesty isn’t the best policy?
Hold your horses! If disclosure were the only liability, then sure, you could just stay quiet. But that silence could cost you more than you realize, because when customers find out about AI usage on their own, there’s almost no coming back from the loss in trust. In fact, 62% of consumers say they trust a brand less after discovering undisclosed AI, and many cite unlabeled AI content as their single biggest brand turn-off.
So, what are your options? Deciding between a small hit now or a bigger one later?
Not exactly. What brands need to do is take a step back and understand why consumers recoil at the idea of AI in the first place.
The Three Strikes Against AI
When a customer finds out that AI was behind something, they start running a few quiet calculations in the back of their mind.
The first is about effort:
Telling someone a machine did the work is, essentially, telling them you couldn’t be bothered. And if a brand doesn’t care enough about what it makes to actually make it, why the hell should anyone care enough to buy it? Picture the tale of Cyrano de Bergerac playing out a little something like this: Roxane finds out that the words she fell in love with were not only not Christian de Neuvillette’s, but that the true writer…was a robot.
Doesn’t have quite the same effect, does it? No, because it’s only natural to feel betrayed when you’re moved by a message that seems to understand you deeply, only to learn it was assembled by something that understands nothing.
The second is about who got cut to make it:
Every “AI” label carries a faint reminder that somewhere, a writer or a designer is out of work, and people notice when brands look a bit too eager to swap humans for software just to save a few bucks. And a brand willing to trade away the value of its own employees and customers isn’t one many people want to support.
The third is all about the environment:
Generative AI is staggeringly resource-hungry, with data centers gulping down electricity and fresh water like a frat boy with beer at a keg party, and mindful consumers aren’t stupid. To a customer who cares about the environment, your "AI-Generated" label might as well read "we really don’t give a F***."
Every time your brand decides to use AI, remember that you’re risking a good chunk of your audience thinking: ‘Oh… so, they don’t care about their customers, their employees, or the planet.’
Now, before you spiral, hear us out. We’re not saying AI is evil across the board, or that your brand has to renounce the technology entirely to avoid a customer uprising. We’re realists. AI isn’t going anywhere. And with standards already forming across industries, rejecting its efficiency outright simply isn’t sustainable. But neither is using it with reckless abandon. So what now?
The Line We Draw
We keep it simple here at Branch and Bramble: AI is welcome in a few select places, and is perpetually banned from others.
We feel okay about using AI to:
Clean and organize data
Build spreadsheets
Schedule meetings and speed up logistical busywork
First-pass research
We don’t let AI anywhere near:
Brand voice development
Campaign concepts, content, and creative
Strategy and positioning
Anything built to make a customer feel something
As a company whose bread and butter is empathetic marketing, we hold that last one close to our hearts. Mass-producing emotion is the fastest way to make it ring hollow. Just as with guilt marketing, manufactured feelings will be viewed as manipulation the moment they're caught.
What This Means for Your Brand
Keep humans visibly on the creative, strategic, and emotional work. That's the trust you're banking on for later.
If you want to use AI, use it for the operational load, and don't be cagey about it. Efficiency in the back office is nothing to hide.
When you do disclose, give it context. An "AI-assisted" label on its own isn’t going to reassure anyone. Showing the human judgment around it does.
Let empathy and evidence set the pace. Efficiency and dollar signs cannot be your only goals. If they are, we promise you, your brand is not long for this world.
The Bottom Line
The paradox will really only catch brands that cross the line to begin with, so don’t give customers a reason to lose trust in the first place. When you keep AI in the back office and give real people the chance to blossom creatively and strategically, admitting you use AI stops being an apology.
When it’s done right, telling people where AI fits into your business doubles as a statement of what you refuse to let it do. For us, that means saying that we’ll gladly, though mindfully, let AI carry the busywork so our people are free to do the work that matters most. But we’ll never hand off the part of the job that earns our clients’ trust in the first place, because that part is still, stubbornly, beautifully, human. And we're in no rush to change that.
