ABSTRACT Grounded in ambivalence theories, this research examined factors shaping consumer ambivalence toward AI‐generated content and investigated differences between commercial and noncommercial contexts. As a preliminary study, sentiment analysis of Reddit data using a support vector machine (SVM) revealed that most consumer sentiment toward AI‐generated content was positive, identifying “Content Creation/Writing” and “Art/Creative” as the most prominent domains. Based on these findings, an online survey of 281 US participants was conducted to examine consumer ambivalence toward commercial and noncommercial AI‐generated content. Results from single‐group and multi‐group structural equation modeling (SEM) showed that perceived appropriateness and novelty reduced skepticism, while perceived appropriateness, novelty, and perceived effort enhanced liking. Skepticism and liking simultaneously predicted subjective ambivalence, supporting the dual‐pathway framework. Content type moderated the relationship between skepticism and ambivalence, such that the effect was stronger for AI‐generated commercial ad images than for noncommercial AI artwork. No moderating effect of content type was found in the relationship between liking and ambivalence.
Lee et al. (2026) studied this question.