Trust in the Age of AI Advertising

Had an enlightening experience being part of an esteemed panel last week at the Jio World Convention Centre, for ASCI’s 40th AGM, Vision 2032.

On stage with Sudhanshu Vats, Anuradha SenGupta and Manisha Kapoor, skillfully moderated by Ashraf Engineer.

ASCI is India’s advertising self-regulatory body, the reason most ads you see have already been quietly checked before they ever need a regulator or a court to step in. We started working with them a few months ago on expanding AI’s role inside ASCI’s charter, and it’s been genuinely rewarding watching a brilliant team think this through with real rigor rather than chasing the word AI for its own sake.

I like conversations where AI is not the center of attention but part of a larger one, and this one earned that balance well. After all, technology is a means, not the end.

Loved the apt theme for ASCI’s Vision 2032: building the industry’s trust infrastructure for the next phase of advertising.

In the next few years (if not already), most of an ad’s journey, targeting, personalisation, even parts of the creative itself, will have AI somewhere in the chain. A lot of it will be synthetic content that looks, sounds and moves exactly like something real.

When that becomes normal, trust stops being a compliance checkbox and becomes the only thing separating a legitimate brand from anyone with access to the same tools.

One of the lines said at the event stayed with me:

The question changes from “Can we publish?” to “Can we defend, explain and sustain that trust at speed?”