A new report from The Growth Distillery found only 30% of Australians trust most technology to act in their interests, and 42% are often unsure whether content is real or AI-generated, despite spending a third of their waking lives online. Trust has quietly become a performance metric, and the brands that choose clarity over speed will win it.
Australians are living online and trusting none of it. That gap is where brands either build trust or lose it.
Australians spend a third of their waking lives in digital spaces and trust almost none of it. A new report from The Growth Distillery found that only 30% of Australians trust most technology to act in their best interests, and just 18% feel optimistic about where technology is heading.
The gap between use and trust is the whole story. People are more connected than ever and more suspicious than ever at the same time. A striking 42% said they are often or always unsure whether the content or person they are interacting with is real or AI-generated. That uncertainty is the new baseline for any brand operating online.
The report points to AI acceleration without guardrails as one of the forces driving the tension, moving faster than the rules and safeguards meant to contain it. The conclusion is a clear steer for brands. The ones that win will make technology feel safer, clearer and genuinely on people's side.
Why it matters
Trust has quietly become a performance metric. When 42% of people cannot tell whether what they are looking at is real, every AI-generated ad, every synthetic voice and every automated interaction carries a risk of eroding confidence. The brands treating AI as a pure efficiency play are missing the other half of the equation. Clarity, transparency and a human hand are not soft values right now. They are the difference between a customer who believes you and one who assumes the worst.
Only 30% of Australians trust most technology to act in their interests, and 42% are often unsure if content is real or AI-generated. Source: The Growth Distillery.
What to do about it
Label your AI. If you use synthetic voices, images or copy, being upfront builds more trust than being caught.
Keep a human in the loop where it counts. Automated everything reads as careless in a market this sceptical.
Make clarity a design principle. Clear beats clever when nearly half your audience is unsure what is real.
Measure trust, not just efficiency. If AI cuts cost but costs you belief, that is a bad trade you are not tracking.
The Australian consumer is connected, capable and deeply unsure who to believe. The brands that choose clarity over speed will be the ones people still trust when the noise gets louder.