When Artificial Intelligence Lacks Effort: The Trust Cost of Disclosing Generative AI Authorship Communication in CSR

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has rapidly become embedded in marketing workflows, enabling brands to produce scalable text, imagery, and campaign assets at unprecedented speed. While firms emphasize efficiency and scalability, consumers are left to interpret what disclosure signals about authenticity and trust. Its use is thus transforming marketing communication, yet new disclosure rules require firms to reveal when AI systems—not humans—author persuasive content.

This shift raises an important question: How do consumers respond when corporate social responsibility (CSR) messages are disclosed as AI-authored? Across two pretests and two experiments, this research examines how GenAI disclosure affects brand trust in CSR communication. Drawing on attribution theory, perceived communicative effort—the thought and care inferred behind a message—is perceived as a novel cognitive mechanism linking disclosure to trust outcomes.

Results show that AI disclosure lowers perceived effort, which diminishes perceived sincerity and, in turn, brand trust. The findings advance the understanding of consumer–AI interactions in moralized domains and offer actionable guidance for managing transparency and authenticity in AI-mediated branding

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Kristina Klein is a Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour at the University of Bremen (Germany). She is also co-director of the markstones Institute of Marketing, Branding & Technology. Her research interests are in consumer behaviour, brand management, and digital transformation topics. She is also interested in how digital technologies change marketing and consumer behavior. Her work has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, the International Journal of Research in Marketing, Psychology & Marketing, Marketing Letters, and the Journal of Business Research. She serves as Associate Editor at the Journal of Business Research and the Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, and on the editorial review boards at the Journal of Interactive Marketing and the Marketing ZfP.