Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

This study investigates the consumer reactions to Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) content in digital advertising by analyzing the Top-Dog vs. Underdog dynamic. While GenAI offers brands significant advantages in cost reduction and rapid prototyping, its implementation often triggers AI Disclosure Bias, Algorithm Aversion and Human Favoritism when used by major corporations. Utilizing a sentiment analysis based on lexicons and language models (SentimentR, NRC, RoBERTa, and SBERT) of YouTube comments, we compared two corporate campaigns that befall under the Top-Dog category with two fan-made creations by Underdogs. Our findings suggest that corporate efforts to simulate human authenticity using AI tools, triggered high levels of negative emotions such as Anger and Disgust. Meanwhile, individual creators who are using AI for parody and entertainment resulted in positive emotions such as Joy and Anticipation. The study concludes that the Uncanny Valley is more of a contextual psychological barrier than a technical one.  Consumers seem to reject AI content derived from market leaders but embrace it as a creative assistance tool when it comes from individual underdogs.