When the Brand Is No Longer Human: Generative AI, Perceived Human Agency and the Future of Consumer-Brand Relationships
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55544/sjmars.5.3.10Keywords:
Generative artificial intelligence, consumer-brand relationships, perceived human agency, brand humanness, brand authenticity, AI-generated advertising, anthropomorphism, digital brandingAbstract
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is moving rapidly from a backstage marketing technology to a visible creator of advertisements, social-media content, brand stories, synthetic models and conversational communication. This transition raises a fundamental branding question: what happens to consumer-brand relationships when consumers perceive that meaningful communicative agency has shifted from humans to machines? Existing research documents consumer responses to AI-authored messages, AI disclosures, virtual influencers and synthetic advertising, but these streams remain fragmented and frequently emphasise immediate outcomes such as advertising attitudes, purchase intentions or credibility. This conceptual study integrates consumer-brand relationship theory, anthropomorphism and mind-perception research, brand-authenticity scholarship and emerging GenAI-marketing evidence to explain the relational consequences of AI-generated brand communication. It introduces perceived human agency as a central mechanism and develops an AI-Humanity Paradox: GenAI can simultaneously increase perceived innovativeness, novelty and creative capability while weakening brand humanness, authenticity and emotional sincerity. Comparative evidence from Coca-Cola's GenAI-generated Holidays Are Coming campaign and Levi's collaboration with Lalaland.ai demonstrates how these tensions become particularly salient when AI enters communication domains associated with heritage, emotion, identity and human representation. The paper further distinguishes AI-assisted from AI-authored communication and proposes that perceived replacement of human intention, rather than AI use per se, determines relational risk. The resulting framework contributes to emerging research on GenAI and branding by repositioning artificial content generation as a problem of agency attribution, authenticity and relationship meaning.
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