'Caught in that tricky middle ground': Adobe highlights widening gap between consumers and businesses using agentic AI

• Adobe launches AI and Digital Trends Report
• A survey of 3000 executives and 4000 consumers reveals attitudes to agentic AI
• Consumers want the human touch, but are businesses even ready?

Adobe has released its 2026 AI and Digital Trends Report, surveying 3000 executives and 4000 consumers to lay bare the attitudes of both companies and consumers towards agentic AI, business readiness, and the overall experience and expectations.

The report has some interesting findings - for one thing, fewer than half of consumers (43%) globally said they'd interact with a brand's AI agent when offered the chance. And 46% said they had no issues if a brand uses AI - with one massive caveat businesses need to seriously consider: they don't care about agentic AI use - as long as their needs are met.

I'd expect these numbers to grow - up to a point. Because even now, a clear trend is developing.

Report findings

Elsewhere, according to Adobe's report, 37% said they'd cut short engagements with a brand if they were expecting a human contact and got an AI, and 70% believing that those AI interactions need to feel human. So, people don't want robots - they crave the human touch.

But what really stood out to me is the massive disconnect between how consumers and businesses measure AI success.

As you'd expect from businesses, the core measurements of success are cost metrics and efficiency gains.

That's simply not what consumers are interested in. According to Adobe, Users are judging AI experiences on "trust, transparency, and whether their needs are met."

To me, this feels like some brands risk putting the cart before the horse. Without meeting users where they are, and delivering on their expectations, all the efficiencies and savings in the world won't stop consumers from finding a business that can meet their demands.

However, some of that may be around the difficulties faced by businesses to properly scale their AI.

The report highlights how readiness to deploy enterprise AI is facing extreme pressures, with the biggest barriers to scaling up being data integration and data quality (75%). Fewer than half of executives surveyed (43%) believe their data quality and accessibility are adequate enough for AI use. And without either of those, effectively any AI is doomed to fail.

That may well explain why so few of those companies have launched organization-wide agentic AI for customer support (16%) and discovery and search purposes (13%).

But it's not all bad news for brands.

Away from agentic AI, the vast majority of respondents (76%) claimed generative AI (think Firefly or Google's Nano Banana) has improved the volume and speed of content ideation and production. Meanwhile, 70% said it's helped has enabled non-creative teams to produce content.

Regarding the findings, said Rachel Thornton, CMO, Adobe Enterprise, said: “Many organisations are still caught in that tricky middle ground between expectation and execution. As customer expectations shift, brands must evolve to orchestrate Agentic, AI-driven experiences that can act and respond across every touchpoint [...] to deliver meaningful experiences at a global scale.”

Adobe AI: at Adobe

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