Quip’s latest ad wasn’t AI-generated. People were convinced it was

In reality, the spot was entirely AI-free. The 15-second ad features a human figure with a mouth for a head lounging in a spa on a shell-shaped daybed, clutching a comically oversized toothbrush. It was the ad’s deliberately hyper-stylized visuals that led some viewers to assume it had been generated by AI. But the spot had actually relied on practical effects, including a physical set, a human model and miniatures. 

The response prompted Quip to publish a behind-the-scenes post on its blog. The company had already planned to release the footage but moved up the timeline by a month after seeing the comments. When Quip shared the behind-the-scenes footage on Instagram, the company captioned the post, “No AI, just us.”

The goal wasn’t to prove critics wrong so much as to highlight Quip’s creative process. “We’re really proud of the concept. We’re really proud of how it came to life,” Glansberg said. “Let’s highlight what we did do versus what we didn’t do.”

Quip’s blog post walks through the campaign’s production in detail, showing how the surreal visuals were achieved using practical techniques rather than AI. The team built miniature sets to create exaggerated environments, cast an actor to wear a custom-made mouth headpiece and filmed scenes on a blue screen before compositing them together. The final ad layered these elements into a cohesive, dreamlike world.

The skepticism wasn’t coming out of nowhere. There’s no definite way to know how much AI slop — low-quality, mass-produced content generated with artificial intelligence — proliferates online, but it has undeniably inundated most corners of the internet. Most major social media platforms now require disclosure of artificial intelligence use, but those safeguards are inconsistently applied and easy to circumvent.

“Platforms like Instagram will do good work identifying AI content, but they’ll get worse at it over time as AI gets better,” Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri wrote in a December message. “We need to build the best creative tools. Label AI-generated content and verify authentic content.”

At the same time, brands are facing mounting criticism for their use of generative AI in advertising, particularly when that use isn’t clearly disclosed. Last year, J.Crew drew backlash after the Blackbird Spyplane newsletter flagged apparent AI hallucinations in an Instagram ad. The brand initially did not disclose the use of AI, but later updated the credit to “Sam Finn Studio,” an AI design studio, following social media scrutiny. Other brands that have faced consumer backlash for embracing AI in advertising include Coca-Cola, Levi Strauss and McDonald’s. 

Sixty-eight percent of U.S. consumers frequently wonder whether the content they see is real, according to a survey by advisory firm Gartner. And half would prefer give their business to brands that don’t use generative AI in consumer-facing messages, such as advertising.  

According to Kate Muhl, a VP analyst at Gartner specializing in cultural and consumer insights, consumer frustration is rooted in deeper fears about AI replacing workers and rapidly transforming the economy.

“Those feelings get crystallized into anger at brands, because that’s a place where people actually feel like they have some voice,” she said. “There’s something they can do — they can say, ‘I’m not going to use this brand,’ or they can call the brand out online. It’s one of the few places where people feel like they still have some power.” This plays out most clearly in marketing, which Muhl described as the “front line” of how consumers interact with companies. 

In response, some brands are adopting explicit “no AI” positions. Intimate apparel brand Aerie, for example, pledged in October that it would never use AI-generated bodies or people in marketing. The company reiterated that promise in a new ad featuring Pamela Anderson that rolled out a month ago. The move built upon the company’s long-standing 2014 commitment to stop retouching models. 

Other companies, like Apple, have taken a similar approach to Quip, showcasing the human craft and labor behind their marketing efforts. For instance, in December, Apple released a holiday ad that featured a cast of woodland puppets caroling in a snow-covered forest. Apple paired the ad’s release with a behind-the-scenes video that showed how every element, from the puppets to the set, was rendered using practical effects, rather than AI or CGI. The spot stood out because other companies, like Coca-Cola, have turned to generative AI to create holiday commercials, sparking backlash from consumers. 

Still, AI disclaimers aren’t necessarily foolproof. Numerous comments on Reddit, for instance, have ridiculed Apple’s woodland critter ad for looking like AI. One user wrote, “I guess I can appreciate [that Apple used real puppets], but somehow they still seem like AI.” Another commenter said, “Somehow knowing that makes it worse because they took the work of real humans and made it look like AI.”

After years of brands working to build emotional connections with consumers — including pledges not to edit models with Photoshop — the use of AI, or even the perception of it, can feel like a reversal of those efforts, Muhl said. 

Quip, for its part, is not taking an anti-AI stance. Instead, the company is trying to strike a balance between using the technology where it makes sense and maintaining transparency with consumers. For example, Quip avoids using AI in contexts where accuracy is important, such as in demonstrations of how to properly brush teeth. But in other areas, like creating different versions of ads or automating repetitive tasks, the company uses AI.

“We see AI as a really important and valuable tool,” Glansberg said. “But we have pretty strict guardrails around the use of AI.”

Still, Glansberg acknowledged that consumer anxiety around AI is real. 

“People are really afraid and distrustful, and brands really need to navigate that and understand that,” she said. “Right now, people don’t know what they should believe or what they can’t when they go online.”

Quip has no plans to label every campaign as “AI-free.” Instead, the company is focusing on being clear with consumers about how it communicates its use of technology.

“A gut reaction to just outsource everything to AI definitely won’t work,” Glansberg said. “And a gut reaction of, ‘I’m going to walk away and not use AI’ also won’t work.”