Putting an Artificial Intelligence-Generated Label on It Comes Naturally

Climate change and the advent of artificial intelligence-generated content are reshaping wine marketing. The interplay between consumer focus on naturalness and sustainable farming practices and the proliferation of artificial intelligence-generated content represents a particularly salient area of research. However, the extent to which the presence of fictitious artificial intelligence-generated labels and backgrounds impacts consumers' willingness to buy and pay for wine has yet to be addressed. This research contributes to the growing body of literature on consumer susceptibility to sustainability signaling and artificial intelligence greenwashing, focusing on the impact of backgrounds and labels with different degrees of perceived naturalness. Three experiments demonstrate that wines bearing artificial intelligence-generated sustainability labels and third-party accredited sustainability labels reliably exhibit an increased willingness to buy and pay compared to those without sustainability labels. These findings indicate that fictitious, artificial intelligence-generated, and accredited labels are equally effective in influencing consumer wine choices. Customer susceptibility to food labels and wine knowledge and involvement also significantly predict willingness to buy across studies, validating the Customer Susceptibility to Front-of-Package Food Labeling scale. These findings highlight the necessity for future studies to investigate the role of responsible labeling, the susceptibility of customers to such labels, and the potential hazards associated with greenwashing practices involving artificial intelligence-generated labels.