While the whole industry strains to slap the word "AI" on every product, consumers are quietly giving it the finger. A new survey of 2,000 respondents in the US shows that 60 percent of them think brands that boast about artificial intelligence in their ads are - off-putting. Not impressive, not modern. Off-putting.

The numbers go deeper than marketing. A full 86 percent say they don't fully trust artificial intelligence and want to check the original sources. Around 42 percent trust AI-generated answers without a cited source less than they trust hidden airline fees, confusing privacy policies and medical bills - company you really don't want to keep. And nearly three out of four say the internet today feels "less human" than it did ten years ago.

The irony is that companies see the same trend from the other side and are rushing in the opposite direction. As many as 74 percent of executives say visibility in front of AI search engines is their top priority, and 60 percent reported a rise in traffic from such tools. In other words, while the ordinary user flees artificial intelligence, firms are rebuilding their sites to please the machines, not people.

That's exactly what Brian Alvey, chief technology officer at WordPress VIP, who ran the survey, said: "People used to build websites for other people. Now you have to build websites for AI agents." The sentence is short, but the whole story of the internet in 2026 is in it. A network created for people is increasingly being written for algorithms, and the human is becoming an accidental witness to a conversation between machines. As many as 80 percent of respondents say information on the internet should stay openly accessible - the question is whether anyone is even listening.