According to new polling data from GSG, American voters are consuming more content than ever — but they’re trusting less of it, especially content from artificial intelligence and social media influencers.
Nearly six in ten voters say online news and information is “often” AI-created or AI-influenced, a figure that jumps significantly higher among Gen Z.
That perception aligns closely with new Gallup research released this spring, which found Gen Z’s use of generative AI remains widespread — 51% use AI weekly — but enthusiasm for the technology is rapidly declining. Anger and skepticism toward AI increased substantially year over year with many young Americans worrying that AI could damage creativity, critical thinking, and career opportunities.
Recently, we saw this anger play out at commencement ceremonies where graduation speakers were booed for mentioning AI in their addresses.
GSG’s research also found that voters increasingly rely on “shortcuts” to determine what information to trust: recognizable sources, familiar messengers, clear explanations, and information that feels intuitively understandable.
Notably, voters at least claim to place significantly more trust in established news organizations than they do in social media creators or influencers.
This creates a problem for marketers seeking to communicate with informed audiences, such as likely voters. With traditional news sources in decline, many agencies have turned to influencer marketing to reach key audiences. However, our data shows voters are highly skeptical of social media influencers as nearly half say they “always” verify information from social media creators or AI-generated sources before believing or sharing it.
This trend likely reflects years of misinformation, political polarization, algorithmic feeds, and now AI-generated content entering the mainstream simultaneously.
The result is a communications environment where voters are overloaded with information but starved for certainty. For marketers and communicators, that means being transparent when using AI-generated content and being careful when working with social media influencers to select creators with credibility over reach.
The rise of AI and social media influencers has intensified a broader trust crisis already reshaping media, politics, and public life. The lesson from both our research and public polling is not that voters reject technology and creators — it’s that they are demanding something harder to manufacture: credibility in an environment where authenticity itself feels uncertain.