Did your brand show up or just your bot? A Gen Z lens on AI in marketing

You open a webpage. Intrigued, you see a headline that grabs you, a picture that pops. "Yes!" you think, "This is it!" You click the link, ready to see what's next. 

Instead of an actual voice, you see paragraphs of text that sound like they were written by an AI attempting to sound human. The typical “It’s not just X. It’s Y,” an over reliance on (often misplaced) em dashes, and a polished, formulaic video jumps out at you immediately. Disappointed, you close the tab. 

In an age of convenience, AI is everywhere. It changes the way we think and write, and even permeates social media. But what do we, adolescents, really think about Artificial Intelligence? We’ve grown up with AI, and our constant exposure to it has made us pretty good at identifying what’s real and what's not.

Our relationship with AI: A double-edged sword

AI definitely has its perks. But it can also have its downsides.

The good

For schoolwork, AI is a huge productivity booster: it helps us conduct preliminary research we can use as a starting point to go deeper. AI offers real-time feedback on grammar or vocabulary as it understands the flow of language. It can also clarify hard concepts in a way that's personalized and easy to understand. 

The not-so-good

The fine line between how AI is helpful and how it hinders students while learning is tricky to navigate. AI-generated content, especially when used in writing, feels less personal and reduces an individual’s style and voice. It feels like someone used a literal robot to generate information, and, to be honest, it’s easy to identify when something is generated vs written. AI images and charts are often not developed or organized well enough. 

The AI credibility phenomenon extends beyond education and seeps into marketing; when companies use AI to create content, whether that be an advertisement, a campaign, or even website copy, the outcome feels bland, and more importantly, fake. We then lose the credibility those websites worked hard to build because we start to think, 'Do they even care?'

But before we explore AI in marketing, take it from us teenagers:

Avani

"One thing I’ve noticed is how quickly AI became a crutch for so many of my classmates. I’ve seen people struggle even to phrase a proper prompt for a language model, not because they didn’t know what they wanted to say, but because they didn’t know how to express it clearly in the first place. That gap says a lot. It’s not just about using AI to clean up your ideas; it’s about whether you had ideas to begin with. When we rely too heavily on AI to think or communicate for us, we risk losing the very skills we’re trying to strengthen. Watching that happen around me has made me more intentional about when I turn to AI, and more aware of the importance of my own voice in the process."

Chloe

"When AI first appeared on the market, it seemed incredible (even if a little dystopian). Everybody was using it, so I wanted to experiment with it as well. It felt like the absence of AI automatically made you a worse writer than your classmates. When faced with in-class essays for AP World History, however, I had a moment of realization: I was much too reliant on it. It extended beyond stylistic improvements and ended up impacting the critical thinking aspect itself. Practicing writing without the influence of AI has taught me not to completely discard it, but to leverage it efficiently."

Why this matters in marketing

For Gen Z, the need for connection is higher than ever. We don’t want content to just look good, we want content we feel a connection to. We’ve grown up watching thousands of campaigns, creators, and trend cycles through our screens, and over time, we’ve developed a sixth sense for what’s real and what’s been mass-produced by a bot.

When content feels AI-generated or an ad features a clearly artificial person, it immediately creates a sense of distance. It’s the difference between being spoken to and being spoken at. You can sense that it wasn’t written with the audience in mind, but rather pushed out for the sake of efficiency; that lack of care shows. The moment we come across a caption or script built on predictable, formulaic structures, we disengage. There’s no intrigue, no sense of connection, and no reason to give it a second thought. 

In today’s hyper-competitive market, where consumers are overwhelmed with choices, people aren’t necessarily buying your product; they’re buying your brand. This makes authenticity and individuality more important than ever. If your content doesn’t reflect genuine effort or personality, it quickly fades into the background.

What makes the growing reliance on AI in marketing even more complicated is the way platforms themselves are starting to respond. Tools like Google’s ad systems are becoming better and better at identifying AI-generated content, and in some cases, deprioritizing it. Recent reports have shown that when ad copy is produced by a language model, especially without meaningful human editing, it may be flagged as low-quality or overly repetitive. This can result in lower ad delivery, higher costs, or reduced visibility. In other words, it’s not just audiences who are tuning language models down; algorithms are, too.

This creates an interesting tension when platforms like Meta are also beginning to roll out their own AI-generated content tools, suggesting copy or headlines for advertisers while potentially penalizing external AI-written content that doesn’t meet quality standards. Content that feels generic to a person is often treated the same way by the platform’s backend. The result is a campaign that underperforms on every level, failing to connect with people and quietly sinking in distribution.

But, beyond just ad performance, trust is at play. When we see AI-generated content—especially in paid ads—it sends a subtle but powerful message: the brand didn’t care enough to make something real. It feels dismissive. We’re the ones giving attention, money, and time to a brand, and we hope they would give the same effort back.

Insights for older generations

If we’re buying your product, wearing your logo, resharing your reel, or showing up in your comments, we want to believe and feel someone on your team showed up too. We want to like brands. We want to know there’s a real team that thinks about how to speak to us, not just because it’s their job, but because they understand us. The ads that stick with us don’t feel AI-generated. They feel messy in the right ways. Like humans, they’re spontaneous, weird, clever, but still thoughtful.

The brands that get it (and the ones that don’t)

Duolingo: This brand gets it (-ish)

A brand that exemplifies this approach is Duolingo. Their quirky TikTok presence doesn’t feel like it came out of a strategy doc written in corporate speak. It feels like someone on their team genuinely understands the platform, understands the culture, and is having fun with us, not talking down to us. It works because it’s not AI, it's them, and that’s obvious.

The -ish

Ironically, though, Duolingo recently announced it’s moving toward an AI-first model and laid off a significant number of staff in the process, prompting backlash and raising questions about the company’s future direction. For a brand whose social presence feels so human, the shift is jarring. Whether or not it affects their voice long-term remains to be seen, but it highlights the broader tension brands face as they figure out how to stay human without falling behind the tech curve.  

Levi's: This brand doesn’t

On the flip side, there are so many brands whose entire online presence feels automated. From an overused tagline to a perfect stock video template, it feels pre-packaged. Even if the campaign is technically good, it’s forgettable because it never gave us a reason to care. 

A perfect example of this disconnect was when Levi’s announced they’d be using AI-generated models to “increase diversity” in their advertising. From a Gen Z perspective, that move completely missed the point. Instead of investing in real, diverse models with real stories, they chose convenience and cost efficiency. It felt performative, like the brand wanted the aesthetic of inclusivity without the effort or accountability of actually representing people. That kind of thinking is what erodes consumer trust, and once a company loses that, no algorithm can get it back.

We’re not anti-tech. We’re just not fooled by it. AI is fine when it helps polish or structure something, but when it becomes the entire voice of a brand, the soul disappears. For a generation that’s already skeptical of being sold to, that’s the quickest way to lose us.

So here’s the takeaway: if you're using AI, use it with us in mind. Put in the time. Let your team be creative. Give us something that shows you tried, because we notice when you treat us like people, and when you treat us like data points.

Next steps

Now that we’ve established our perspective towards AI and how it can infiltrate our lives, a simple question comes to mind: where do we go from here? Here are some tips (from a teenager’s point of view) to make sure we’re using authentic human language moving forward:

To creators and marketers: 

Use AI like a supplement and not a replacement. Use your authentic voice and creativity to brainstorm ideas, then put them into an AI to expand further. Use AI as inspiration. Don’t ever take information word-for-word from an AI source. 

For marketing, use AI to personalize content. Netflix and Spotify use AI to give you unique content and playlists, and Amazon uses it for specific product recommendations.. Use it to better our experience with your brand, but don’t use it to speak to us.

To parents and teachers: 

Don’t assume that AI is our go-to for everything! While we did grow up surrounded by AI, that only makes it easier for us to detect when it’s used. If you notice your child or student is using AI as a crutch, use positive reinforcement to steer them away from overusage (but don’t completely shut it out). You can help by talking to us about AI's strengths and weaknesses, even helping us come to these same conclusions on our own. The key here is to guide, not to tell or direct.

For the next generation: 

As AI evolves, so will we. Let's push for a future where AI helps us express our creativity, not one where it flattens everything into blandness. It's up to us to demand and create content that still feels human.

The bottom line

AI is changing how content is made, but the way it’s used will determine whether brands connect or lose trust. For Gen Z, the difference is clear: content that feels AI-generated is the content we ignore. 

We are not anti-AI, but we are pro-effort. The most impactful content is the one that feels human, intentional, honest, and made by someone who understands their audience. Keep humans in the loop, because in a market flooded with automation, authenticity is what will set your brand apart.