The AI content flood is here, but it’s real-world connection that will drive the greatest impact for brands
By Sal Worby, Marketing & Communications Director
Right now, we’re witnessing the fastest shift in how content is created since the dawn of the internet. AI is enabling anyone to publish anything - at speed and at scale. We've all seen the playful examples that have popped up on our social feeds of dancing cats, beauty products flying over cities and surreal experiments like all sorts of materials from steel to marbles being cut cleanly in half by a knife.
But what’s emerging now is something far more significant. Soft-focus images that were clearly identifiable as AI just weeks ago are rapidly becoming indistinguishable from real life content. And the data backs up that this isn’t just a fad, it’s a content transformation.
Analysts estimate that 34 million AI-generated images are being produced every single day and more than 15 billion such images have been generated worldwide since 2022.[1] Elsewhere, according to one recent analysis of 900,000 newly published web pages, 74.2% of them contain AI-generated content[2].
At this pace, it’s entirely possible that within months, the majority of content you consume online will be machine-generated. This matters, especially for younger people growing up online as we’re entering a world where much of what they watch, read and learn from won’t be created by a human at all. And when content and experiences become limitless, effortless and optimised for eyeballs, what becomes really rare is real life.
Face-to-face connection, collaboration, conversations, confidence built by doing - these are the things AI can’t automate. They’re the things that shape identity, empathy, creativity and courage. When you ask young people what they truly want, they talk about friendship, confidence, belonging, skills and real-life interaction that scrolling can’t solve. In fact, a 2025 survey found that nearly half (47%) of young people aged 16–21 in the UK say they would prefer growing up in a world without the internet.[3]
When screen time becomes default and AI-powered feeds dominate, real life becomes the real differentiator.
At We Are Futures, we believe that in a world flooded with synthetic content, the magic will lie in real human experience and we walk the talk.
Our five-year partnership with Sky Arts on Access All Arts has now engaged over 1 million children across the UK, giving young people hands-on creative experiences at a scale AI content could never replicate. Each year we bring together world-class creative figures to inspire the next generation. This year, that included Darcey Bussell, Fleur East and Wicked’s Tony-winning costume designer Paul Tazewell, who all helped young people step into real creative practice from dance and performance to storytelling and costume design. The result? Young people consistently report boosted confidence, increased engagement and richer creative expression, proving that real-world inspiration still drives deeper impact than anything delivered through a screen.
And more recently we launched Yoplait’s Brilliant Bones campaign, where we partnered with Tom Fletcher to inspire children to understand and celebrate their growing bodies in a way that felt fun, real and genuinely human. Rather than relying on AI-generated content, we built the campaign around authentic stories, classroom experiences and Tom’s creative approach. In its first phase alone, the programme has already reached 30,000 young people, generated 75,000 social media engagements and delivered 15 million impressions across more than 70 pieces of PR. The response shows that when brands invest in real experiences and real voices, the impact goes far beyond what synthetic content can achieve.
These examples demonstrate something crucial. AI can speed up production, but human emotion, context, and authenticity will be what drives real impact.
So what does this mean for brands? In this shifting landscape, the brands that will matter the most are the ones that:
Create moments that young people can actually feel, not just see or scroll past.
Invest in real spaces, real communities and real connection giving people something tangible and lasting to belong to.
Champion curiosity, play and discovery beyond the scroll offering experiences, not just content.
Use AI to unlock more human experiences - not replace them.
AI will help us make things faster and smarter, but it will always be the human moments that define us. The future will belong to a generation who uses technology brilliantly but who choose to live life boldly in the real world too. And the brands that help facilitate those moments will be the ones they remember.
[1] https://www.digitalsilk.com/digital-trends/ai-statistics
[2] https://ahrefs.com/blog/what-percentage-of-new-content-is-ai-generated/