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Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

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Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#121

Post by throw7 »

nerdjon wrote: post #13

This is the problem with all of the recent “AI” crap that has been shoved into our devices. We have had ML features for years and it provided real benefits but most people did not know or care how it worked, it just did its job in the background without the underlying tech being shoved in your face. Everything AI though is the opposite, it wants to focus on the technology first and the benefits second. It is actively…

They've regressed for a long time and there's no signal to consumers that "AI" is anything that "fixes" or brings back what was working.

The example I always give is when google maps got speech recognition, I could ask it "Hey google, what's the E.T.A." and it would magically respond with how long till I arrive. Somewhere along the line it broke and for years now it doesn't work... the last time I tried my phone actually brought up the web browser and did a web search. smh.

The first thing I did when they forced gemini was I went to look how to disable it. Why? It override the old voice I chose to read calender events in the morning... in fact it would start reading like normal, then that stupid gemini voice would cut in and be entirely unhelpful.

its all enshitification.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#122

Post by ryukoposting »

dbalatero wrote: post #5

I could be wrong, but it feels like one issue is that AI seems to cater more as a signal to venture capital and the internals of the tech industry in a lot of these products, while consumers just want to know "what is this product going to actually do for me," and care less about whether it is implemented with the buzzword du jour.

At best it's seen as an out-of-touch techie buzzword. More commonly it's associated with useless chatbots and ugly pictures. At worst it's associated with destruction of the natural environment, corruption, and small towns hollowed out by horrible living conditions imposed upon them by west coast capitalists.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#123

Post by afavour »

nightski wrote: post #78
dngray wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real thing i think people forget is that humans actually value time and effort from other humans. AI is often used by people who want to do neither and that's really what it boils down to. Ask yourself, would you like to receive a christmas or birthday card with a personalized message or something produced you know was 100% produced by AI bot - even better when it has a hallucination in there.

Hallmark built a brand on creating generic messages in card.

I don’t really want to defend Hallmark too much but I’d argue they provide a means of low effort personalisation. You choose a design that reflects you and your relationship to the recipient. You write a personal message inside (hopefully). The alternative is creating a card from scratch which is a big step up in creativity and time requirement.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#124

Post by data-ottawa »

dbalatero wrote: post #5

I could be wrong, but it feels like one issue is that AI seems to cater more as a signal to venture capital and the internals of the tech industry in a lot of these products, while consumers just want to know "what is this product going to actually do for me," and care less about whether it is implemented with the buzzword du jour.

It’s so hard to find usable products when everything is “XYZ for the Agentic era”

Okay… what does that mean?

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#125

Post by throwaway63467 »

For most consumers AI will be a net negative. Already I can tell more and more companies use it in their call centers and support workflows, often just to stonewall customers: they reply very politely and with great attention to detail but will not solve your issue as they don’t have any decision power.

I really don’t look forward to this new world, AI is a powerful and useful too for creators but it will and already is used for all the wrong reasons, apparently even to pick which targets to destroy in war, essentially making life or death decisions in some areas with little to no oversight. And then people here think that any kind of regulation around this tech is useless and unwarranted…

Don’t get me wrong I use AI all the time but I fear it will be the most disruptive technological development in both positive and negative ways that we have ever dealt with.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#127

Post by THansenite »

inigyou wrote: post #76
dngray wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real thing i think people forget is that humans actually value time and effort from other humans. AI is often used by people who want to do neither and that's really what it boils down to. Ask yourself, would you like to receive a christmas or birthday card with a personalized message or something produced you know was 100% produced by AI bot - even better when it has a hallucination in there.

But that's the rare exception. Almost nobody prefers an artisanal chair over one from IKEA, especially when they see the price tag.

This is so true. My wife loves knitting and frequently gets comments about her items of people asking if they could have her knit something for them. When she tells them that if she tripled the prices of a similar store-bought one, she'd still be making sweatshop wages, they go back to the mass produced version they already have pretty quick.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#128

Post by ilaksh »

ck2 wrote: post #96
dbalatero wrote: post #5

I could be wrong, but it feels like one issue is that AI seems to cater more as a signal to venture capital and the internals of the tech industry in a lot of these products, while consumers just want to know "what is this product going to actually do for me," and care less about whether it is implemented with the buzzword du jour.

Is anyone old enough to remember the switch from customer call centers having a human quickly answer to long long annoying phone menus because that friction, getting the customer to do some work or busy distraction, somehow saved costs for the company? No-one likes phone menus and immediately wants to escape them (then they disable pressing 0 for human) "AI" to me means the exact same thing company wants to cut costs…

LLMs are replacing a lot of the inflexible phone menus, and in leading implementations, can do all of the things a human could do. Or at least, make a recommendation for things it can't do that just require a human to hit an accept button.
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