Summary: When users didn’t know whether an image was AI-generated, the images we tested did not create any perception penalty compared to stock photos.


AI tools can now generate polished website imagery quickly and at low cost, making them an increasingly practical option for design teams. But organizations may hesitate to use AI-generated images if they worry that users will see them as less trustworthy, professional, or authentic than real photography. We conducted a study to test whether AI imagery, when encountered without provenance information, affects users’ actual perceptions of a company.

How We Evaluated Perceptions of Company Trust Between AI vs. Real Images

We recruited 77 participants from the general U.S. adult population to evaluate 6 versions of a fictional consulting firm’s webpage. The webpages were identical except for the hero image: 3 used AI-generated stock images and 3 used real stock images. Participants were not told that the study involved AI-generated images. After viewing each page for 10 seconds, participants rated the company’s trustworthiness, professionalism, and authenticity. They also answered an open-ended question: “What other factors influenced your impression of this company?”For the quantitative analysis, we conducted a mixed-effects analysis to account for differences across participants and images. We also ran pairwise t-tests comparing ratings for each individual image and applied a Bonferroni correction to account for multiple comparisons.

We analyzed the open-ended responses using thematic analysis .



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