The research question of this study is whether and how different forms of collaboration between generative AI and humans in advertising content creation lead to different consumer evaluations. Generative AI has rapidly advanced and is now widely used across business settings to improve efficiency and reduce costs. In marketing communications, in particular, AI is increasingly used not only to generate advertising copy but also to produce and edit visual content, enabling faster, lower-cost, and large-scale content production. At the same time, advertising is not merely part of firms' promotional activities; it is also a form of creative output in which creativity and expressive quality are valued. For this reason, AI involvement in advertising production may influence not only efficiency but also how consumers evaluate both the advertisement itself and the brand behind it.Prior research suggests that AI involvement can elicit perceptions of reduced humanness, lower genuineness, and lower effort, thereby potentially undermining perceived authenticity. Kirk and Givi (2025) show that AI-authored marketing communications can shape consumers' authenticity judgments and related responses, while Dietvorst, Simmons, and Massey (2015) suggest that algorithm aversion may lead consumers to evaluate AI involvement negatively. In addition, De Cicco, Francioni, Curina, and Cioppi (2025) compare AI-created, human-created, and blended content as broad categories, suggesting that collaboration between AI and humans may mitigate negative reactions to fully AI-generated content. However, prior research has paid less attention to differences within collaborative creation processes themselves.

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Keywords: generative ai, human-ai collaboration, authenticity, advertising