It’s hard to find a communications team right now that hasn’t been asked to help tell its organisation’s AI story. Leadership wants the market to know the company is embracing AI, and PR gets the assignment.
The problem is that audiences have largely stopped rewarding companies for it. In CARMA’s new study, Perceptions of AI: A Power Shift, nearly six in ten respondents said companies exaggerate their use of AI through buzzwords.
Almost half admitted they pay less attention to a message simply because it mentions AI.
The study is the second edition in CARMA’s Perceptions of AI series, authored by Jennifer Sanchis, Insights & Consulting Director for CARMA Europe & US, whose measurement work has earned multiple AMEC Gold Awards.
It pairs analysis of 6,006 articles from 500 tier-one outlets across 45 markets with survey research among 6,300 respondents in 19 countries, covering the first half of 2026. Jennifer walked through the findings in a recent CARMA webinar, and her commentary highlights what the data means for communicators.
The Attention Paradox
The findings on AI messaging cut both ways.
« 51% said that indeed they paid more attention when a company highlighted its use of AI, » Jennifer explained. « But also 44% said that they paid less attention to messages that mentioned AI. So what does it mean? It means that AI can attract attention, but also that generic AI messaging could increasingly lose its impact. »
AI still opens the door. What no longer works is walking through it with nothing but the word « AI » in hand. Audiences responded most positively to communications that demonstrated tangible outcomes, with productivity, efficiency, and practical value proving far more compelling than adoption claims alone.
And if you’re worried your organisation missed the window to tell its AI story, you haven’t. Roughly half of respondents still view companies that integrate AI more positively than those that don’t. The difference now is that the advantage has moved from announcing to explaining.
The Transparency Gap is your opening
The single most useful finding in the study is a mismatch. Media coverage associates trust in AI with safety, reliability, and accountability. Audiences care about those things, but they put far more weight on something else: understanding how AI actually works, how decisions get made, and where humans stay involved.
« People want to hear about how AI systems are operating, how they are used to make decisions, how that works, » Jennifer said. « From a PR point of view, that really creates opportunities around communications about how you actually implement AI, how it is developed, how it is governed, and how it is used. »
Most organisations aren’t communicating any of that. The ones that start will be filling a gap their competitors leave open. It appears to pay off, too. Global public trust in AI rose from 26% in 2025 to 30% in 2026, and for the first time trust overtook excitement as the dominant public emotion, even as media trust signals moved the other direction.
The Messenger Problem
CEOs accounted for nearly half of all commentator voices on AI and generated the most positive coverage. They are also, according to the survey, among the least trusted sources on the subject. Academics, who tend toward nuance and even criticism, are the most trusted.
« They might be really positive, but excitement alone is not enough to establish credibility, » Jennifer noted.
The risk concentrates where AI meets workforce news. Where coverage linked executive AI statements to layoffs or restructuring, 52% of articles carried a negative tone compared with just 18% positive.
Jennifer illustrated the stakes with two bank CEOs, one day apart. Standard Chartered’s Bill Winters described back-office staff as « lower value human capital, » a phrase she predicted « is certainly going to leave a stain on him and his bank for quite some time. » The next day, Barclays’ CEO talked about the same subject and landed the opposite way, describing AI’s impact honestly while insisting that « a job is much more than a collection of tasks. »
Her takeaway from the contrast: « You need to be seen as defining human value to have that differentiator. »
Two bank CEOs spoke about the same subject a day apart and drew opposite coverage because of how they communicated it.
This is now a Governance and Geopolitics story
The study also documents a broader shift that changes the context for every AI message. Coverage moved away from what AI can do and toward how it should be deployed, who controls it, and what it means for national security and competitiveness. National security and strategic competition themes accounted for over two-fifths of geopolitical AI topics, and governance debates intensified worldwide.
For communicators, that means AI messaging no longer lives in a technology conversation but rather an accountability conversation. Organisations that can speak credibly about governance, testing, and oversight will find that governance has become a reputational differentiator rather than a compliance chore.
What to do with this
The report closes with eight recommendations for communicators. Among the highlights:
- Retire the AI announcement and communicate measurable outcomes instead.
- Make transparency about how your AI works the centrepiece, because that’s the largest unmet audience expectation the study found.
- Prepare your CEO before AI meets workforce news, balancing productivity with empathy and reskilling.
- Address cybercrime, misinformation, and job displacement directly, since media and public opinion are converging on exactly those three concerns.
Jennifer ended the webinar with a challenge for comms teams.
« Don’t just monitor AI as another topic. Monitor how people are feeling about it. Monitor how these perceptions change over time, and help your organisations understand what earns trust and what undermines trust. Because organisations won’t be judged simply on whether they adopt AI. They’ll be judged by how they adopt AI, how they explain it, and whether people trust them to use it responsibly. »
The full report covers seven chapters, including AI as a strategic and geopolitical asset, the governance debate, regional and demographic differences, and all eight recommendations in detail. Download Perceptions of AI: A Power Shift, or watch the webinar replay for Jennifer’s full walkthrough.
