This week some of the biggest names in AI have asked whether the technology is moving too fast. But for many people, their exposure to it in the last 7 days might have been seeing their friends in a 1980s getup. Existential questions at one end, mullets and shellsuits on the other.
Scroll down to read about Navier-Stokes, the subtitle audience, and how “blandification” is more popular than you might think.
Stats to power your week
🛑 A few weeks ago we discovered that almost two-thirds (63%) of consumers felt that AI development was moving too fast. Not for the first time, the public have been ahead of the experts, with the CEOs of the big AI labs now increasingly in agreement that they need to “pace the frontier”. GWI Pulse
❓Part of the reason for the slowdown is because AI keeps exceeding our expectations. Earlier in the year we polled consumers on what they thought AI would be capable of by 2030. Only 41% felt it would solve a major mathematical problem in that time, but within a couple of months it seems like OpenAI has solved one of the million-dollar Millennium Prize problems. GWI Pulse
⬜Whether you call it “refinement culture” or “blandification”, it sure feels like a lot of brand logos have radically simplified in recent years. But more consumers say a logo change makes them view a brand more positively (22%) than negatively (10%). Creative directors looking for more budget: you can thank us later. GWI Pulse
🙉Here’s a great stat for the content creators: 1 in 5 of your viewers aren’t listening to you. No, literally: 19% of consumers always listen to short-form video with the sound muted, making subtitles vital. The main reason for doing so is not wanting to disturb people in a public place - if only everyone was so considerate. GWI Pulse
Meet the audience: sports prediction apps enthusiasts
Without GWI data
With GWI data
Has there ever been a greater gift to advertising discourse than Sydney Sweeney? Whether it’s jeans, lingerie, or bathwater-infused soap, she produces the most talked-about celebrity endorsements, for better or for worse.
Her most recent partnership is an eye-catching one with Novig, a sports prediction app. So it gave us a good opportunity to look at the audience of people interested in using such services, and how much the ad might fit their profile.
First things first - yes, it’s a majority male audience. But they’re not the college-kid basement-dwellers you might imagine. While it’s a young audience, the majority have kids. 17% have a postgraduate degree and 13% work in executive management. While we don’t have data on the effectiveness of clothing (or lack thereof) in ads, we do know that celebrity endorsements are actually one of the weakest routes to this audience, compared to sports sponsorship and cinema advertising.
Chart of the week
The history of work is also a history of technological change, and yet between 2020 and 2022 the share of Americans worried about losing their jobs to technology stayed at low. Of course, something happened in late 2022 that changed all that.
Since then, the number has climbed fairly steadily, reaching 10.7% in early 2026 - almost double where it started. And this is a fear that seems to have spread everywhere, from junior to senior employees, and across all levels of education.
As AI has become more mainstream and more capable, all groups are increasingly feeling fearful.
More from GWI
Who better to tell us about fatigue with AI on social feeds than the people at BeReal? Our latest Talk Data To Me features US Managing Director Ben Moore chatting about all things authenticity.
Ad sellers have been on the vanguard of the demand for self-serve, AI-boosted insights, but they’ve largely left to fend for themselves. We have you guys covered in our upcoming webinar.
