Nearly half of US consumers now believe generative AI has made content quality worse. The finding, presented this week at Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo in Denver alongside a separate warning on AI-powered disinformation, points to a deepening challenge for those responsible for customer experience. While the two issues are distinct in origin, both result in customers finding it harder to know what to trust.
Consumers Growing Weary of AI-Generated Content
According to a Gartner survey of 307 US consumers conducted in March 2026, 49% agreed that generative AI has made the quality of content available worse. Among Gen Z and millennials, that figure rose to 57%.
Kate Muhl, VP Analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice, argued that while AI is driving up the sheer quantity of content consumers encounter, it is not driving up quality, and that brands must work harder to establish credibility and be deliberate about where and how they show up.
Customer journeys increasingly begin with a product search, a review, or an AI-generated summary. With Gartner forecasting AI will handle more than a third of all marketing work by 2028, the volume of AI-mediated content consumers encounter is only set to grow. If consumers approach that content with scepticism, brands may encounter greater friction before an interaction has even started.
AI-Powered Disinformation Creates New Brand Risks
Alongside the content quality findings, Gartner has separately identified AI-powered disinformation as an urgent and growing risk for marketing and CX leaders. Andrew Frank, Distinguished VP Analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice, was direct: "Disinformation is no longer just a cybersecurity, legal or public affairs issue. It is a brand issue."
Frank warned that AI has made the production of false and misleading content significantly cheaper, easier to target and faster to distribute at scale, changing the risk profile for brands in ways that marketing teams cannot afford to ignore.
Gartner predicts that by 2027, 50% of enterprises will be investing in disinformation security products or services and what it describes as “TrustOps strategies”, up from less than 5% today.
For customer experience teams, the threat is practical as much as reputational. False narratives about a brand's products, policies or service quality can generate unnecessary inbound contacts, undermine self-service channels and erode confidence in AI-powered support tools, often before a business has had any opportunity to respond.
Why These Trends Matter
AI content fatigue and AI-powered disinformation are different problems. One reflects the cumulative effect of lower-quality content flooding digital channels; the other involves deliberate efforts to mislead. Yet both contribute to the same result, leaving customers with a harder task when trying to identify reliable sources.
The challenge is no longer simply delivering information. It is ensuring customers can trust the information they receive. That applies to product pages and knowledge bases, but equally to AI-powered chatbots and virtual agents, which draw their credibility directly from the accuracy of the content and data that underpins them. Organisations that deploy AI to inflate content volume without investing in accuracy may find the approach compounds the very scepticism Gartner is describing.
The Opportunity: Becoming a Trusted Source
For CX leaders, the current environment may represent as much an opportunity as a threat. Muhl suggested that the brands best placed to win will be those with a clear understanding of where attention is concentrating, how trust is being formed and what kinds of experiences leave a lasting impression.
Strong knowledge management, content verification and AI governance frameworks become CX priorities rather than back-office concerns. Frank's broader argument was that trust needs to be treated as operational infrastructure, built into systems, processes and response capabilities, rather than something communicated through messaging alone.
As AI-generated content becomes ubiquitous, the ability to offer accurate, consistent and verifiable information may become one of the most valuable differentiators available to customer-facing organisations.