A Study of Consumer Trust in Online Reviews and Social Media Comments in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

As the digital landscape evolves with the continuous fast-paced development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), both businesses and consumers face numerous challenges posed by the ever-growing industry of AI. As business struggle to keep up with the technological advancements, consumers, on the other hand, face a more personal issue: their trust in an internet sustained by AI tools. Since half of the internet traffic is created by non-human bots and a third of all internet traffic is generated by “bad bots” which were developed for malicious purposes, the integration of AI managed to confer them human-like qualities. The “dead internet theory”, generated social media interactions and content, fake online reviews, generated blog posts, and the dilution of quality online content, all sustained by AI pose a threat to the trust and the legitimacy of the internet as a tool for humanity that was carefully built in the last decade. Our research is trying to find the level of trust of Romanian consumers in online platforms that are used as tools for selling and promotion of products and services, amidst the rapid integration of AI. The results can be used as a warning signal for consumers and policy makers alike to take a stronger stance on the online content that encourages or promotes online purchases. A survey has been deployed to 100 Romanian consumers, and the results have been analysed. Most respondents do base their purchasing decision on online reviews with slight differences between men and women yet most fear that AI and bots have a part in influencing these reviews.