Is Similarity in Advertising a Double-Edged Sword? The Role of AI-Generated Faces

Generative AI technologies enable advertising practitioners with new possibilities for hyper-personalized advertising. In this research note, we focus specifically on AI-generated faces (AGF) and investigate its effects on advertising effectiveness. This paper has three main contributions. First, it presents a methodologically innovative way to measure facial similarity by building advances in AI. Second, it contributes theoretically by introducing the too-similar-to-me effect in advertising. Third, it empirically assesses the optimal range of facial similarity, which is of managerial importance when building advertising campaigns. This study provides practitioners with key guidelines on how to successfully embed generative AI technology for advertising.