Yes, it’s another AI article. This probably isn’t the first article about AI that you’ve seen today, but it may be the first article you’ve ever read that asked real promo customers what they think about using AI to order promo products.
We specifically asked about generative AI: AI that creates images or copy in response to prompts, including ChatGPT, DALL-E, Copilot, Gemini, and Grok. If many of those other articles are to be believed, most people are running towards our new generative AI overlords with minds open, arms outstretched, and prompts at the ready.
We found a more mixed response. While a lot of people say they’re comfortable with generative AI and use it quite frequently, they’re not ready to fully trust it just yet – especially when it comes to ordering promo products.
People Told Us They Like Generative AI
When we asked how people felt about AI, the general mood could be summed up as hesitant acceptance.
The majority feel more positive towards AI than negative: Nearly 53% of our respondents rated their comfort level with generative AI as 6+ out of 10. Those good vibes somewhat translate to adoption, with 45.87% using AI at work at least once a week, and 18.52% of all respondents using it every day. Over half (58.40%) of all respondents use it at least once a month.
This general openness towards generative AI aligns with people’s confidence in their ability to spot AI-created content. We didn’t put them to the test, but 57.26% rated their own ability to tell the difference between AI-made and human-made content as at least 6 out of 10. However, in a 2024 study, participants mistakenly identified AI art as human-made in 38.92% of cases – so our respondents might be overly optimistic about their skills.
Focusing on the promo industry specifically, all of our respondents had previously purchased customized items for either personal or professional use – and most see room for generative AI in the promo-ordering process. Given a hypothetical list of eight different ways they could use generative AI to order promo products, only 9.69% said that they wouldn’t trust AI to do any.
TL;DR: Most people are feeling tentatively positive about generative AI, to the point that the majority are using it in their jobs at least once a month. They’re confident they can identify it in the wild – and they can see opportunities to use it while ordering promo products.
People Don’t Want to Use AI-Generated Content
On the surface, people are open to some explor-AI-tion. (You don’t get puns like that from AI.) But probe a little deeper and how they really feel about AI – especially when ordering promo products – gets a little less rosy.
There’s a gap between people’s theoretical comfort levels with AI and how happy they are to use it in real life.
Here’s one of the most revealing findings. Even when people think that AI would be at least as good at a creative task as a person, they’re reluctant to use AI. Nearly ¾ (72.65%) of our respondents said that AI is equally as good or better at creating logos than people. However, only 41.31% said they would use AI to make logos for their business, and only 37.04% said they would use AI to create designs for promo products.
Most also don’t trust the content created by generative AI without some human intervention. Of the people who use generative AI, 14.44% make changes half the time. The majority, 66.06%, make changes most of the time: 62.84% of those who do make changes described the changes as small, compared to 37.16% who said they usually make major edits. That leaves 14.44% who generally don’t edit AI content at all, and an unhinged 5.05% who said they don’t even check the content AI makes.
TL;DR: Promo customers don’t even trust AI to do tasks they think it can manage at least as well as a person, and most typically make at least small changes to AI-generated content.
People Are Less Optimistic About AI in Promo Than in General
If people are uncertain about using AI in general, they’re downright down on using it to order promo products.
We’ve seen that most people rank their comfort level with AI in general on the higher end of the scale: 6 or more out of 10. However, the average rating was 5.48 out of 10, which is definitely more on the cautious side. And while 18.52% said they use generative AI every day at work, even more – 23.36% – said they’ve never used it. (In another question, this never-use number went down to 21.08%. Maybe doing the survey was enough to convert some people!)
Interestingly, the average comfort level goes down when you talk about AI in promo-ordering specifically. When we asked them to rate their optimism that AI would improve the promo-ordering process, the average rating was 4.98 out of 10: not so much cautious as veering pessimistic. The question about using AI specifically to order promo products saw higher percentages of people giving 0 to 4 ratings out of 10 (41.31%) than the question on AI generally (31.34%).
When we asked which aspects of ordering promos they would be comfortable using AI for, the single most popular answer was logo placement. But fewer than 50% of our respondents chose it – only 42.45%. None of the other answers received more than 40% of the votes. That suggests that over half of people aren’t interested in even the most popular AI use case for ordering promos.
TL;DR: People’s imagined enthusiasm for AI doesn’t mean they actually want to use it to order promo products. Even the most popular hypothetical AI task convinced fewer than half of our respondents.
Conclusion: People Aren’t Ready to Use AI to Order Promo Products
People are talking the AI talk, but when it comes time to walk, they’re getting cold feet – especially when it comes to ordering promo items.
Even though the majority of our respondents say they feel comfortable with generative AI and use it at least once a month, most wouldn’t trust it to create a logo for their business or promo product. When we asked which promo assets they would use it for, nearly 10% said they wouldn’t use it for any of the options – and the most popular answer (logo placement) was chosen by fewer than 43% of respondents.
From our survey, we can tell you that whatever promo customers think about AI in general, on average they don’t see it improving promo-ordering and can’t see themselves using it. Remember that for the next AI article you read.
Extra Sources
Natasha Lavender
Natasha is an experienced writer and editor who has covered topics including technology, health and safety, business, and pop culture. Her work has been published by Good Housekeeping magazine, Forbes, Success, and more.
