In the aggressive corporate race to optimize artificial intelligence (AI), brands are successfully catching the attention of AI search engines but losing the trust of human consumers in the process.
Businesses face a stark paradox: While traffic from AI-driven search platforms is rising, consumer skepticism toward AI-branded messaging has reached a tipping point, according to a new report released by WordPress VIP, the enterprise arm of publishing giant Automattic.
The study, which surveyed 2,000 participants — including 1,200 U.S. adults and 800 enterprise decision-makers and chief marketing officers (CMOs) — reveals a deep cultural fatigue with the automation of the internet.
Nearly three in four respondents (74%) said the internet feels “less human” than it did a decade ago, largely attributed to AI and automation. Furthermore, the report introduced the concept of bot fatigue, finding that the average consumer grows weary of AI interactions after just 40 minutes.
For brands shouting their AI capabilities from the rooftops, the data serves as a reality check. Two-thirds of consumers report that mentioning “AI” in brand messaging is a turn-off rather than a selling point. Additionally, 86% of respondents said they do not fully trust AI-generated content, including troubleshooting and customer service chats.
Ultimately, the report emphasized that transparency remains paramount. One-third of consumers cite clicking through to an original source as their primary trust signal, and 80% believe the web should remain openly accessible rather than controlled by a handful of tech conglomerates.
“No customer or user wakes up and says, ‘I hope I get to talk to a chatbot or an AI agent today’,” said Brian Solis, head of global innovation at ServiceNow Inc., in the report. “Human-centered design is truer today with artificial intelligence.”
This skepticism is hitting corporate credibility hard. The report found that 42% of consumers trust unattributed AI-generated answers less than traditional consumer pain points like airline fees, confusing privacy policies, and medical bills.
Despite consumer wariness, enterprise data shows that the shift toward an AI-driven web is already well underway. Sixty percent of enterprise respondents reported an increase in traffic from AI search engines and answer platforms over the past year. Consequently, 74% of enterprise decision-makers now rank AI discoverability and attribution as a top priority.
This leaves companies navigating a difficult dual reality: they must format their data to be readable by AI scrapers while maintaining an authentic, human-centric front end for actual visitors.
“People used to build websites for other people,” said Brian Alvey, chief technology officer of WordPress VIP. “Now you have to build websites for AI agents acting on behalf of those people. If your site’s content isn’t legible to AI, you are invisible… And if your content doesn’t feel human and trustworthy for the tiny percentage of people who actually click past the AI answer engines, they won’t come back.”
