YouGov Study reveals approximately 50% of Aussies comfortable with use of AI in advertising

An international study by YouGov has shed light on what consumers across the globe think about the use of generative AI in brand and product advertising.

This comes as OpenAI’s Sam Altman suggested that AI could ably take over 95% of what advertising and creative professionals produce today, and as big tech firms Like Meta and Google roll out new AI-powered image and text generation tools for ad creation.

YouGov’s insights found that, across the globe, consumers were most comfortable with AI deciding the placement of advertisements in media channels. 42% expressed this sentiment.

Comparatively, these insights found that consumers were the least comfortable with AI creating a virtual ambassador. Only 34% said they were comfortable with this use.

As for Australians, 53% were not comfortable with brands using artificial intelligence (AI) to develop virtual brand ambassadors, and 52% were uncomfortable with AI editing product images.

However, less than half of Australians were uncomfortable with AI being used for generating product images (49%), copywriting ads or product descriptions (45%) and deciding ad media placements (42%).

Comparative to the other 17 nations in the study, Australia was mid table when it came to discomfort with use of AI in marketing.

The nations most uncomfortable with this tech used in advertising were France, Sweden, Britain, Spain, Canada and Italy.

However, although approximately half of Australians expressed that they were comfortable with the use of AI in advertising and marketing, of this half, most thought brands should disclose their use.

76% of those comfortable with the use of a virtual brand ambassador thought that the brand should disclose this.

This sentiment was shared by 70% who were comfortable with AI-use generating product images, 67% for product image editing, 63% for copywriting ads and product descriptions and 60% of deciding ad media placements.

Australia placed among the top of the table in this regard.

Other top of table countries included Spain, Poland, Britain and India.

These insights are available on the YouGov website, Part 1 and Part 2.

Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provides quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 17 markets with sample sizes varying between 500 and 2,040 for each market. All surveys were conducted online during January 2024. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.