AI gets personal: Coding trust into brand connection

AI is reshaping how brands connect—shifting from automation to empathy, driving trust, loyalty, and emotional relevance at scale.

- DR HARISH KUMAR & SWARN SAGAR

Consider an e-commerce platform like Amazon that presents product recommendations aligned with user preferences before a search is initiated. Or a streaming service like Netflix that suggests the next viewing option before the current selection concludes. These are not accidental experiences—they are driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is transforming how brands engage with consumers.

Al has evolved from a background function to a central component of customer engagement. It enables organisations to analyse, anticipate, and respond to consumer behaviour with increasing accuracy. Today, Al not only powers operational processes but also redefines how brands interact with customers, shifting from generic messaging to deeply personalised connections.

THE CHANGING ROLE OF AI IN BRAND ENGAGEMENT

Al has quietly undergone a metamorphosis in the marketing world—evolving from a backstage assistant to a central architect of brand-consumer relationships.

Its early use was largely reactive: streamlining repetitive tasks, such as answering frequently asked questions or processing service requests. As data capabilities matured, Al entered a predictive phase—drawing from behavioural insights to recommend products, anticipate needs, and nudge consumers toward decisions.

The current stage marks a further evolution: the emergence of empathetic Al. This phase involves systems that go beyond prediction and response, incorporating mood, context, and cultural understanding to enable more nuanced and human-like interactions.

This transition represents a critical inflexion point. The role of Al is expanding from automation to emotional simulation at scale. In this model, brands are not merely disseminating information but engaging through intelligent systems capable of adapting to user context and fostering interactions that resemble personalised, human engagement.