BY: Jim Louderback, Founder & CEO Inside the Creator Economy

Klaviyo surveyed consumers and found that only 13% completely trust AI, and 32% say they trust brands less when those brands use AI-generated content in marketing. SmythOS found that 52% of users disengage from AI ads once they identify them. YouTube is moving its AI disclosure label to the most prominent spot on the page, directly below the video player, after its algorithms auto-detect “significant photorealistic AI.” Gen Z, the most AI-native cohort in history, worries about AI taking entry-level jobs. A study from Epidemic Sound found that the 18-to-24 crowd is the least enthusiastic about using more AI over the next year.

So the backlash is real. But here’s what that data leaves out: what people watch.

Over 20% of videos served to new YouTube users are already low-quality AI-generated content, according to research cited in The Guardian. Instagram’s Adam Mosseri has effectively admitted AI slop now owns the platform. TikTok launched its in-app microdrama theater in the US at the end of 2024, then spun the format into a standalone app, PineDrama, in the US and Brazil this past January. Those formats are largely AI-assisted, algorithmically tuned, and growing fast in developing markets where the best screen in your life is the one in your pocket.

People say they don’t like AI content. Then they watch it. It’s human nature, and media history keeps proving it.

When YouTube launched, traditional media executives called creator content low-quality, untrustworthy, user-generated garbage. Viewers kept watching. Cable TV was supposed to kill quality television. Audiences adapted. Reality TV got denounced as the death of storytelling. Ratings said otherwise. Every time a format arrives that’s cheaper, faster, and tuned to what one person wants to see next, people complain but then keep watching anyway.

For creators, there are two paths. Only one will survive.

The first is to double down on what AI can’t fake: human taste, a messy point of view, earned trust, specific expertise and a parasocial bond built over years of showing up. I call this Relationship Media, where watching turns into belonging. AI can synthesize information. It can’t synthesize trust. The creators who own a specific voice, a specific community and a specific relationship with their audience can box AI out.

The second path is to treat AI as what it is: a cost-of-production story. The slop is already competing for attention. The platforms are already serving it. So the real question is whether you’re using AI on purpose or getting used by it.

Here’s what fails. Performing AI-skepticism for an audience that’s watching the stuff anyway, while you fall behind on volume and reach because you’ve decided to do everything by hand.

The backlash is real… but watch what people do, not what they say.