AI has become embedded in nearly every aspect of marketing — from software and team KPIs to C-suite roadmaps. Leaders are pouring money into it, headlines tout sweeping change, and tech stacks are ballooning. Yet for many social media marketers doing the day-to-day work, AI’s real-world value still falls short of the buzz. Research commissioned by Hootsuite and carried out by Censuswide1 shows that 86% of senior marketing leaders and 79% of social media managers now rely on AI every day, but their trust in these tools is far from solid.
Key takeaways
AI usage is widespread, but most tools aren’t built for social. Only 39% of social media managers think their AI is powered by real-time data.
Rather than freeing up time, AI is often creating extra work. 43% of SMMs spend more than 11 hours per week inside AI tools, and almost half still monitor trends by hand.
Trust remains fragile: only 28% of social media managers feel their AI accurately reflects what’s happening on social right now, so they must constantly supervise and revise outputs.
Budgets are climbing quickly, but performance isn’t keeping pace. 40% of marketing leaders report wasting at least 10% of their AI budget on tools that failed to deliver.
OwlyGPT is built specifically for social, offering live insights, early trend spotting, and content that’s ready to publish out of the box.
How is AI slowing social teams down?
The issue isn’t that AI lacks promise or that the core models are broken. The real challenge is that most AI platforms aren’t tailored to the speed, nuance, or format of today’s social channels. They claim to automate work but still demand heavy oversight. They surface data but miss the surrounding context, and they’re trained on information that rarely mirrors what people are actually doing and saying on social right now…