Why Are Companies Spending More On AI Content When People Don’t Like It?

Marketers are pouring money into AI-generated content, even as audiences grow tired of it. New research from the creator agency Billion Dollar Boy found that 79% of marketers have increased spending on AI-driven creator content in the past year. Another 77% are planning to move even more of their budgets away from human-made work and into AI campaigns over the next 12 months.

Consumer enthusiasm, meanwhile, is heading in the opposite direction. Only 26% now say they prefer AI-generated creator content… it was 60% two years ago. The agency’s survey of 6,000 consumers, creators, and marketers across the US and UK shows that while the technology is becoming central to marketing, audiences are growing weary of it.

Even so, three quarters of marketers expect total creator ad spend to climb again next year. In the US alone, 71% are already spending more than $1 million a year on creator marketing. For many, the attraction is no longer about novelty because it’s about efficiency and scale.

 

Why Are Marketers Hooked On AI Content?

 

AI has made advertising cheaper to produce and faster to deliver. Billion Dollar Boy’s report shows that 81% of marketers think AI has made creator partnerships more cost-efficient. Nearly three quarters say AI content performs better than traditional creator work. Many creators agree: 84% say it has reduced their workload, while 85% believe it’s helped them earn more.

The story is similar in video advertising. The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 2025 Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report found that nearly nine in ten advertisers are now using AI to build video ads. For smaller brands, this has been transformative as they can now create high-quality campaigns without large teams or expensive shoots. AI tools allow them to generate multiple versions of an ad, change visuals, or tailor content for different audiences in minutes.

This is appealing because a process that once took weeks can now happen in a day, freeing marketers to test and tweak endlessly. Whether the content feels authentic or not often takes a backseat to performance metrics and speed.

 

What’s Turning Consumers Off?

 

For audiences, though, the flood of AI output has started to wear thin. Social feeds are filling with what users call “AI slop”… cheap, repetitive material that lacks creativity. Billion Dollar Boy’s data shows that 44% of consumers believe AI has increased the overall volume of content, but not necessarily its quality.

Back in 2023, a third of consumers believed AI would improve the creator economy, and fewer than one in five thought it would harm it. Two years later, those numbers have evened out: 31% now see AI as positive and 32% view it negatively. Consumers are not rejecting the technology itself, they are rejecting how it’s often used.

Interestingly, younger users are more forgiving as 2 in 5 people aged 25 to 34 prefer AI-generated creator content. They’re more open to experimentation and care less about whether something was made by a person or a machine, as long as it looks good and feels new.

 

Does Performance Outweigh The Backlash?

 

Marketers appear unfazed by the criticism. Their attention is locked on results. The IAB found that store visits and sales have become the most important measure of success for video buyers. AI makes it easier to test, analyse, and adjust campaigns in real time… an advantage too powerful for advertisers to ignore.

The same report found that three quarters of digital video buyers are building in-house teams to manage connected TV ads directly, while 80% still want human input from their platform partners. Automation has made ad buying smoother, but people are keeping one hand on the wheel.

For marketers, efficiency matters more than approval ratings. AI lets them stretch budgets and reach more users. For consumers, that same efficiency can feel like laziness with the content produced at speed, with little care for originality.

 

 

Can Brands Win Back Trust?

 

Billion Dollar Boy’s upcoming report, Muse Two: The Real Impact of AI on the Creator Economy, will dig deeper into this change. It follows the first Muse report from 2023, which captured the early optimism around AI in the creator space. Two years later, that optimism has faded into a more complicated reality.

Marketers have found a tool that saves time and money. Audiences, on the other hand, want creativity and authenticity. The next thing for brands to work on will be finding a middle ground between the two… using AI to create content that feels thoughtful instead of mechanical.

‘Til then, AI may keep driving ad budgets upward, even as consumer interest continues to go down…

Thomas Walters, Chief Innovation Officer, Billion Dollar Boy, shared: “Our research shows that consumers continue to recognise and appreciate the capacity of well considered and integrated generative AI applications to improve the quality and diversity of creator content and a growing rejection of poorly produced content.

“When Billion Dollar Boy first researched AI’s potential in the creator economy 2023, the appearance of generative AI creator content present on platforms was obvious & novel. Fast forward to the present day, the novelty has worn off, and mass produced, unlabelled, and poorly conceived AI ‘slop’ is driving the negative sentiment we are seeing.

“Despite this swing, the creators surveyed are reporting an increase in performance of content they have produced utilising generative AI as part of the process. So it’s clear that there remains considerable consumer appetite and interest where it’s applied correctly.

“There is a huge opportunity for creators and marketers who apply generative AI creatively and strategically. As marketers pivot their AI strategies from test-and-learn pilots to long-term investment plays, the winners will be those who find the right balance between machine capability and human creativity and who champion quality over quantity.

“As we enter the next stage of AI’s growth in the creator economy, spend alone won’t guarantee success. Brands and creators must work with forward thinking experts to navigate them through a more challenging post-AI creator economy.”