Should your business website use AI-generated visuals or pay for licensed stock photos? A new August 2026 study from Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) gives a clear, if nuanced, answer: when visitors don’t know an image was made by AI, they rate an AI hero image just as trustworthy and professional as a real stock photo, and sometimes marginally higher. For SMEs watching every marketing dollar, that finding changes the math on website imagery.

But there’s an important catch, and it has real consequences for how you use these tools. Below we break down what the research actually found, where the risk hides, and a practical checklist so your website benefits from AI imagery without quietly losing visitor trust.

What the new NN/g research actually found

NN/g recruited 77 U.S. adults to evaluate six versions of a fictional consulting firm’s homepage. Three versions used AI-generated hero images (created with ChatGPT Images 2.0) and three used real stock photography. Participants weren’t told AI was involved. Each person viewed a page for 10 seconds, then rated it on trustworthiness, professionalism, and authenticity using a 7-point scale, analyzed with mixed-effects models and pairwise t-tests.

The result: AI images scored slightly higher across all three measures, about 0.2 points higher on trust and professionalism and 0.4 points on authenticity. Only the authenticity difference was statistically significant, and even that gap was, in NN/g’s words, “very small.” In short, source alone did not determine how visitors judged the page. What mattered was whether each individual image worked for its context.

The catch: perception flips when visitors suspect AI

The study surfaced a warning that matters more than the headline. When participants suspected an image was AI-generated, they rated the page less favorably, even when the image was actually a real photo. The suspicion itself, not the technology, drove the penalty.

This is where regulation enters the picture. The EU AI Act and similar rules increasingly require businesses to disclose AI-generated content, and prior research suggests visible “AI” labels can lower user trust. So the comfortable result, “nobody can tell,” only holds while the source stays invisible. As labelling becomes standard practice, thoughtful image selection matters even more.

Why this matters for Vietnamese SMEs

For a Vietnamese SME, a real estate agency, a retail shop, an F&B brand, or a wellness studio, quality stock photography is a recurring cost, and generic stock faces often feel disconnected from a local audience. AI generation lets you create custom hero visuals that match your service, your space, and your messaging, at a fraction of the licensing cost. The NN/g data suggests visitors won’t punish you for it, provided the images are good.

The keyword is “good.” A believable, well-composed AI image that reflects your real offering builds trust; an obviously synthetic one with warped hands or nonsensical text does the opposite, and erodes the very credibility your website exists to build. The savings are real, but only if quality control is real too.

A pre-publish checklist for AI images on your website

Before you drop an AI-generated image onto a landing page, run it through the same scrutiny you would apply to any brand asset. Here is NN/g’s guidance, adapted for SME websites:

• Alignment: does the image match the page’s message and the service it sits beside?
• Representation: who appears, who’s missing, and does it reflect your real customers and team?
• Believability: do the people, setting, and interactions feel genuine rather than staged or uncanny?
• Errors: check for tell-tale AI artifacts such as distorted hands, garbled text, odd reflections, or warped backgrounds.
• Placement and size: confirm the image reads well at the actual dimensions and position on the page.
• Licensing: review the AI tool’s commercial-use terms and training-data policy before publishing.

The takeaway: judge the image, not the source

The real lesson of the research isn’t “AI images are fine” or “stock is safer.” It’s that a thoughtful selection process, applied equally to AI and stock, is what determines whether an image helps or hurts. A weak stock photo can undermine a page just as easily as a weak AI one.

For SMEs, that’s an opportunity. With a modest amount of curation, AI imagery can give your website distinctive, on-brand visuals without the recurring stock-library bill, as long as every image earns its place.

FAQ

Not sure whether AI visuals fit your brand, or want a website that turns those visuals into leads? Explore Webie Vietnam’s website design and digital services, or talk to our team directly: hotline +84 969 838 467, email huyen.dang@webie.com.vn.

Based on: Nielsen Norman Group, “AI-Generated Images Can Perform as Well as Stock Photography” (Aug 21, 2026) — https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ai-generated-images/