Rival Technologies' July 2026 study found that 74% of surveyed Gen Z consumers reacted negatively after realizing that a brand's marketing had been created using AI. Half described their reaction as very negative, while only 8% responded positively.

The behavioral consequences are more significant for marketers.

Half of respondents said they had unfollowed a brand on social media after encountering AI-generated marketing. Another 49% said they had complained to friends, family or online, while 48% had unsubscribed from email or text communications. Most significantly from a revenue perspective, 43% said they had stopped buying from a brand because of its use of AI marketing.

The research was conducted among 901 Gen Z participants in the United States and Canada using Rival's mobile-first, conversational research platform. Because the research comes from Rival's proprietary panels, the findings should be viewed as a snapshot of attitudes among its surveyed audience rather than a universal measure of Gen Z sentiment.

Still, the results point to a potentially important issue for brands scaling generative AI across content operations.

The Problem Is Bigger Than AI-Generated Content

One of the study's more notable findings is that Gen Z's concerns are not primarily aesthetic.

Respondents associated AI-generated marketing with issues such as job losses and uncompensated creative work. That distinction matters because improving the quality of AI-generated imagery, copy or video may not resolve the underlying objection.

For marketing leaders, this creates a communications challenge. A campaign that emphasizes AI-powered efficiency could be interpreted differently depending on the surrounding corporate narrative.

If a company promotes AI as a way to reduce costs while simultaneously announcing workforce reductions, for example, consumers who already associate AI with job displacement may interpret the marketing as evidence of those concerns rather than as a technological innovation.

That puts AI adoption and brand reputation on the same strategic playing field.

Age and Geography Change the Picture

The research also challenges the idea that Gen Z represents a single, uniform audience.

Strong negative reactions increased from 44% among respondents aged 18 to 20 to 54% among those aged 25 to 29. The difference suggests that attitudes toward AI marketing may evolve as consumers move through different stages of education, employment and purchasing power.

There was also a notable difference between Canadian and U.S. respondents. Rival reported that 84% of Canadian participants reacted negatively to AI-generated marketing, compared with 65% in the United States.

The purchasing impact followed a similar pattern: 48% of Canadian respondents said they had stopped buying from a brand over AI marketing, compared with 38% of U.S. respondents.

For multinational marketers, that variation makes a one-size-fits-all AI disclosure or messaging strategy increasingly difficult to justify.

AI Transparency Is Becoming a Brand Question

The findings arrive as generative AI becomes embedded across the modern MarTech stack.

Platforms from Adobe, Salesforce, Google and Microsoft are increasingly integrating AI into content creation, customer engagement, analytics and campaign workflows. For enterprise marketing teams, the technology can reduce production bottlenecks and help personalize communications across thousands or millions of customers.

But automation creates a new layer of brand governance.

Marketing teams now have to consider not only whether AI-generated content is accurate and on-brand, but whether its creation aligns with audience expectations. The question is moving from "Can we automate this?" to "Should we automate this, and how should we explain it?"

That is particularly relevant for creative work. Consumers may tolerate AI for some functional applications while objecting to its use in areas they associate strongly with human creativity.

The Implications for Marketing Teams

The research does not mean brands should abandon AI-generated marketing. Instead, it suggests that AI adoption needs to be accompanied by stronger audience intelligence and clearer governance.

For CMOs, that could mean segmenting audiences by their attitudes toward AI rather than assuming that demographic labels alone predict acceptance.

It could also mean giving consumers greater visibility into where AI is used, maintaining meaningful human involvement in creative development and avoiding messaging that frames human labor as an unnecessary cost.

Rival's Emerging Consumer Index, which tracks Gen Z and millennial attitudes in the U.S. and Canada every two weeks, reflects another emerging requirement: continuous listening.

Consumer sentiment toward AI is still developing rapidly. What audiences reject today may become normalized tomorrow, while new concerns could emerge as AI becomes more deeply embedded in everyday marketing.

Market Landscape

The AI marketing market is moving quickly from experimentation to infrastructure. Generative AI now supports copywriting, image creation, campaign optimization, customer segmentation, personalization, analytics and conversational customer engagement.

That expansion is creating a second challenge alongside implementation: trust.

The Rival study suggests that consumers may judge AI marketing not only on output quality but also on the perceived social consequences of automation. For brands, this introduces reputational considerations into technology decisions that were previously evaluated primarily through efficiency, scale and performance.

The market is therefore moving toward a more nuanced model of AI adoption. Enterprise marketers will need to balance automation with human creativity, cost efficiency with brand values, and personalization with transparency.

The companies best positioned for this transition may not be those that automate the most content, but those that understand where automation adds value without weakening the relationship between brands and consumers.

Strategic Outlook

The Gen Z response to AI marketing is an early warning for marketers rather than a verdict on generative AI itself.

As AI becomes a standard component of enterprise MarTech stacks, brands will need to develop clearer policies around disclosure, human oversight, creative attribution and audience testing. AI-generated content may become commonplace, but that does not guarantee that every audience will accept it equally.

The more important competitive advantage could therefore shift toward AI governance and audience intelligence.

Marketing organizations that continuously test consumer sentiment, understand regional differences and distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable AI use cases will be better positioned to scale automation without turning efficiency gains into brand risk.

For Gen Z in particular, the message from Rival's research is straightforward: how a company uses AI can influence how the company itself is perceived.

Top Insights

• Rival Technologies found 72% of surveyed Gen Z consumers have acted against brands over AI marketing, making AI adoption a growing reputation issue.
• Gen Z concerns center on jobs and creative labor, suggesting brands cannot address AI skepticism solely by improving synthetic content quality.
• Canadian respondents showed stronger resistance than U.S. participants, highlighting the need for localized AI marketing and brand communication strategies.
• Enterprise MarTech platforms increasingly automate content and engagement, increasing the importance of human oversight, transparency and audience sentiment monitoring.
• Continuous consumer research could help marketers identify changing AI attitudes before automation decisions translate into customer churn or brand damage.

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