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The Internet has a major credibility problem. For years, fake news, misinformation and disinformation have made people increasingly skeptical of the content they encounter online. And now, thanks to rampant AI slop, deepfakes and LLM hallucinations, that trust deficit has grown markedly worse.
As a result, according to a recent PANBlast consumer survey, people are now more skeptical of online information than ever, and worse, the prospect of constantly trying to figure out whether the information they encounter is true or not has left them experiencing what the survey referred to as “AI credibility fatigue.”
The survey, which gauged consumers on trust and credibility in the digital age, found that two-thirds of respondents (66 percent) reported feeling exhausted from the task of constantly verifying sources behind AI-generated content. For younger users, not surprisingly, that number is higher: 80 percent of Gen Z respondents and 76 percent of Millennials reported experiencing AI-credibility fatigue, according to the survey.
As a result, nearly half of respondents (43 percent) admitted they don’t trust much of anything they encounter online anymore. Only slightly more than a third (37 percent) said they trust Google AI-generated summaries at face value without double-checking the results.
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And Americans don’t expect things to get better anytime soon. Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) said they anticipate being more skeptical of online information this year, while an additional third (33 percent) expect to maintain their present levels of skepticism. Only four percent said they believe they’ll be less skeptical of online information in 2026.
So, what to do? It appears that many have resigned themselves to accept our informational dystopia: More than a third (34 percent) admitted they now ignore these feelings of credibility fatigue, while 33 percent believe this is simply the new normal.
On the other hand, there are many who continue the arduous task of verifying the information they encounter online. In fact, the survey discovered that many users are now relying on what it referred to as “trust shortcuts,” or fast, lower-effort sources that help them circumvent the Internet’s credibility problem without resorting to serious research. And it just so happens that brand recognition is becoming one such shortcut. According to the study, nearly half (44 percent) of consumers said they rely on information from brands they’ve heard of for determining whether information they encounter is trustworthy. Other popular trust shortcuts include the number of reviews they read (35 percent), Google search rankings (34 percent), recommendations from family or friends (34 percent) and ChatGPT or other LLMs (22 percent).
However, an additional 30 percent of respondents admitted they still don’t trust any single online source available to them.
PANBlast’s “Trust Shortcuts and AI Credibility Fatigue Survey” polled 1,000 U.S. adults in January. Research was conducted by Dynata. PANBlast is a division of PR agency PAN.
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