The Sentiment Floor

A WordPress VIP survey of 2,000 Americans, fielded in April, found that 60% of consumers say a brand using the word "AI" in its messaging is a turnoff.¹ A separate Pew Research survey, fielded in February, found that only 16% of Americans think AI will have a positive impact on society.⁴ The same companies racing to stamp "AI" on every product are spending real money to be found by people who have started flinching at the label.

The two numbers

Sixty percent turned off by the word.¹ Sixteen percent who think the technology will help society.⁴ Those are not the same question, drawn from two different surveys, and the gap between them is the whole story. The first number is about marketing: say "AI" and a majority of your audience likes you less. The second is about belief: strip away the marketing and only one in six people expects the thing to be good for the world. A brand can survive being disliked. It is harder to survive selling something five-sixths of the public has quietly decided is not for them.

This is not a fringe sample. The survey split 800 enterprise decision-makers and CMOs against 1,200 US adults. On one side, the people buying the AI strategy; on the other, the people it is aimed at.¹ The enterprises are pouring budget into "AI discoverability," optimizing to surface inside AI answers and to wear the label loudly. The consumers they are spending to reach are growing allergic to it. Eighty-six percent say they do not fully trust AI and still want to check the original source before acting on an answer.¹

The buyers and the bought-for are looking at the same word and seeing opposite things.

We have watched this number move before

In The AI Washing Index we tracked what saying "AI" did to a company's stock. For most of 2025 it was a premium: in Q3, S&P 500 companies that cited AI on earnings calls averaged 13.9% gains versus 5.7% for those that didn't. By Q4 the premium had flipped. AI-citers averaged +1.5% against +5.6% for everyone else.² The market turned on the word first. The investors did the math, found the receipts thin, and stopped paying for the syllables.

This survey is the same reversal one tier down the funnel. The market repriced "AI" in late 2025. Consumers are repricing it now. The word that used to add a premium on an earnings call and a click in a product name has become, for the majority, a reason to look away. Enterprises are still budgeting as if it were 2024.

We are not boosters and not doomers here; we follow the data, and the data keeps landing on the same denominator. The 14% Problem found that only 14% of AI users at large companies report consistently net-positive outcomes, while the other 86% can't say the tools are working for them.³ Now that Pew survey, different population, different question, returns a matching shape: only 16% of Americans expect AI to have a positive impact on society.⁴

Call it the sentiment floor: the level public opinion has settled to beneath all the spend. No crash, no panic, just something more durable: a quiet majority verdict that the word oversells the thing. You cannot out-market a floor. You can only stop standing on the label and start showing the work. The companies that figure that out will quietly drop "AI" from the headline and let the product speak. The ones that don't will keep paying to be found by people who came specifically to get away from them.