Artificially Generated Reviews in Digital Marketing: Impacts on Trust Perception and Decision-Making

Abstract

This article examines how artificially generated reviews influence trust perception and consumer decision-making in contemporary digital marketing environments. It situates AI generated and AI manipulated reviews within the broader challenges of fake online reviews and asks under what conditions AI involvement in review creation undermines or reshapes their informational value. Using a systematic literature review of peer reviewed studies published between 2020 and 2024, the study synthesizes experimental, survey, and analytical evidence from e commerce and platform- based settings. The findings show that disclosure or suspicion of AI involvement typically reduces perceived authenticity, usefulness, and trust, with downstream effects on purchase intention, willingness to follow recommendations, and confidence in platforms and brands. The review also highlights that most detection-oriented research remains model centric and only weakly connected to user facing governance and design. By integrating these strands, the article identifies key conceptual and methodological gaps and proposes a research agenda for managing artificially generated reviews in a way that safeguards trust and decision quality.