The faster things change, the more we gravitate toward things that stay the same.
It’s no secret that AI is disrupting many aspects of modern life, but recent survey data shows that the more people use the tech, the less they trust it.
The latest numbers from market research firm Morning Consult, released Tuesday, found that AI was one of the least trusted categories among US consumers, with seven out of 10 major AI brands seeing year-over-year declines in their net trust scores.
Google’s Gemini managed to buck the trend and improve its score by six points to lead the pack with a net trust score of 24.
At the same time, some of the brands that saw the greatest improvement in consumer trust scores were decidedly low-tech and high-nostalgia: Capri-Sun, Lunchables, Hot Wheels, and Mr. Pibb.
“What unites them is that they belong to a specific register of American memory: the brand landscape of childhood, before adult complexity set in,” Morning Consult said in the report.
The company has tracked trust scores for nearly 600 brands since 2018 and found that Americans’ overall trust in consumer brands is higher than ever in spite of, well, everything.
Other high-ranking brands — Dawn dish soap, Band-Aid wound care, Heinz ketchup — are “reliable if not particularly exciting” and have “eliminated surprise from the consumer relationship,” the report said.
The report also highlighted Gap’s return to popularity, which it attributed to a heavy adoption of Y2K aesthetics, harkening back to a comparatively less complicated (or at least slower-moving) era.
Americans’ fondness for decades-old standbys stands in stark contrast to their feelings about AI companies, many of which are evolving with head-spinning speed and driving eye-watering financial valuations.
A more detailed Morning Consult report on AI published in May found that more than a third of survey respondents do not trust AI “at all” — roughly matching the share of people who have a positive view of the tech.
Among ten of the leading companies, Meta AI, Perplexity AI, and xAI saw the sharpest declines in overall trust ratings since last year. One in five respondents agreed with the statement that AI companies’ products present “a real risk” of ending human civilization.
“In 2026, a significant portion of consumers are in anchoring mode: seeking brands they can count on when other parts of their environment feel unstable,” Morning Consult said.
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