Artificial intelligence can make almost anyone sound polished in an email. According to new research from Exclaimer, that convenience may also be creating a new problem for businesses: recipients are becoming less certain about who is actually behind the message.
A nationally representative OnePoll survey of 1,000 U.S. adults commissioned by Exclaimer found that 65% now use AI in some part of their communications.
At the same time, 36% said they have questioned whether a message they received was genuine, while 14% said they do not trust emails from external companies at all.
The findings point toward a changing definition of trust in business communications. Good writing is becoming easier to generate. Verifiable identity may consequently become more important.
AI Can Make Everyone Sound Professional
AI’s role in email has quickly expanded beyond simple proofreading.
Twenty percent of respondents said they use AI to improve grammar and spelling, while 19% use it to make their writing sound more professional.
Others are using the technology to change how they present themselves.
Sixteen percent use AI to sound more confident, 12% use it to soften difficult messages, 10% use it to avoid awkward conversations and 9% use AI to hide uncertainty.
That creates an interesting challenge for business communications.
Tone has traditionally provided subtle information about the person writing a message. Generative AI can separate that tone from the sender’s actual confidence, expertise or authority.
“The findings show that AI isn’t reducing the importance of trust in business communications but how people establish it,” said Laura Wilkinson, Exclaimer’s vice president of global marketing.
Identity Becomes the Trust Signal
If polished writing can be generated instantly, recipients need other ways to decide whether a message deserves their trust.
Exclaimer’s research found that 40% of respondents view full contact details as a trust signal, while 35% look for a professional email address using a company domain and 30% consider a clear sender name important.
Nearly one-quarter, 23%, said a professional branded email signature makes a company email feel more trustworthy.
That ranked ahead of legal disclaimers at 17% and consistent formatting at 16%.
An email signature might seem like a relatively small part of enterprise IT, but those numbers suggest its role is changing. It can act as part of an identity layer that connects a message to a recognizable person and organization.
Email Isn’t Going Away
The issue matters because email continues to carry important business communications.
Thirty-five percent of respondents prefer email for employer updates, 33% for formal complaints and 27% for healthcare information.
Permanence is another advantage.
Forty-three percent said they choose email when they need information they can keep or reference later. Another 33% said they have deliberately selected email over another communication platform because they wanted a permanent record.
That makes authenticity particularly important.
If recipients cannot determine whether the sender is legitimate, one of email’s core strengths as a reliable business record becomes weaker.
Email Governance Enters the AI Conversation
For IT departments, the findings extend the AI governance discussion into a familiar but sometimes overlooked piece of infrastructure.
Securing the corporate email domain is only part of the equation.
Organizations also need consistent control over how employee identities, contact details, company information and signatures appear across messages.
AI can generate professional communications at enormous scale. The challenge for businesses is making sure those messages remain connected to identifiable and accountable people.
That puts centralized email signature management and identity governance into a larger conversation about how companies establish authenticity in an AI-driven workplace.
The Bottom Line
Generative AI is making professional writing cheaper and easier, but that also reduces the value of polished language as evidence that an email is legitimate.
As AI-generated communication becomes routine, businesses may need to shift trust away from how a message sounds and toward who can be verified as sending it.
For IT leaders, that makes sender identity, domain controls and consistent email governance more than branding concerns. They are becoming part of the trust infrastructure supporting everyday business communication.