[zbentley]

I'm sure many/most don't know that specifically. But as a sibling poster pointed out, people do have a strong sense for "bullshit"--defined here as fairly crass and/or greedy, low-effort marketing or design. Plenty of people detected bullshit before (correctly or not). I suspect that they often detect it more often or more potently now, both as a result of more desperate non-AI marketing/UX and as a result of increasing corporate use of AI. When they identify bullshit, they're able to map that through the current zeitgeist to "this might be AI", or "I am going to call it AI because I don't like it".

I suspect this cohort is a lot larger than the cohort that directly, independently identifies "that was made with AI". But that's just, like, my opinion, man--take it with a grain.

If true, this phenomenon is conflating years of increasingly invasive/desperate marketing spends, widespread product enshittification, and AI usage, but is simultaneously a genuine indication of a big segment of people's distaste.

All that is separate from revealed preference--however disliked, both past and AI-generated-present marketing of the SALE SALE SALE BUY NOW OR YOU'RE INADEQUATE variety works on a lot of people. So whether "dislike of AI" translates into meaningful behavior changes is anyone's guess. But I think there is a phenomenon being identified here, whether or not it's just AI or something more nebulous.