"Decoding AI Ads" How consumers perceive and make sense of AI-generated advertising content

Sammanfattning

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly prevalent in society and continues to affect marketing and advertising content, understanding how consumers perceive and respond to AI-generated content has become an important area of inquiry. This study uses a qualitative method, outlined in fifteen semi-structured interviews, to find out how consumers perceive AI-generated content in the form of pictures. Taking multiple theories into account, one conceptual framework of AI-driven consumer behaviour, brand authenticity theory, the uncanny valley theory, and legitimacy theory together provide the theoretical foundation for the analysis. The data was analyzed using thematic analysis, resulting in three themes, namely: “Human Involvement, Oversight and Transparency”, "Perceived Flawless Distortion and Detection of AI”, and "Creativity, Effort, Resources and Quality”. The findings suggest that consumers do not evaluate AI-generated advertisements based on AI use alone. Instead, responses are shaped by a combination of factors, including brand consistency, perceived quality and effort, emotional engagement, and the degree of transparency brands show about their use of AI. Transparency emerged as particularly important, as disclosure of AI use was consistently associated with greater trust and acceptance. The uncanny valley effect was also found to be a significant source of discomfort, particularly when AI was used to generate human likenesses that fell into an unsettling middle ground between human and artificial. Consumers evaluated the legitimacy of AI practices and their use in advertising, which often directly affected trust and behaviour. This study proposes an extended version of Pan’s (2025) conceptual framework of AI-driven consumer behaviour that incorporates brand authenticity dimensions within the AI perception stage, introduces the uncanny valley effect as a disruptive threshold variable, adds relevance of the brand as a component when consumers perceive AI-generated ads, and finally places legitimacy as a parallel layer shaping consumer responses across all three stages. These additions offer a more complete theoretical account of how consumers engage with AI-generated advertising and point clear directions for future research.