For the second year in a row, we’ve surveyed marketers to understand the impact AI is having on all aspects of content marketing.
301 respondents shared what they’re using AI for, how it affects their productivity, their favorite tools, and more.
Key takeaways:
- AI use in content creation is almost ubiquitous, with 93% of respondents saying they utilize it
- Claude is the most-used model for content creation, chosen by 83.2% of respondents, followed by ChatGPT (75.7%) and Gemini (57.9%).
- Twice as many marketers use AI to check AI-assisted content (from 14% in 2025 to 28.6% in 2026).
- More of the content respondents are producing is ≥75% AI, but that’s still the minority of what’s published
93% of respondents are using AI to help create content
Out of 301 responses, 280 (93%) reported using AI to create or help create content, up from 87% in last year’s survey.
Among the 6.98% who don’t use AI, almost all cited accuracy as a concern, and more than half said they generally distrust AI-generated content.
While the numbers are substantial, they shouldn’t be too surprising.
As Ahrefs’ Ryan Law previously noted, with countless “legacy” tools like Gmail, Google Docs, and Slack each getting AI integrations, the opportunities to utilize it are everywhere.
Then there’s the growth of platforms like ChatGPT in general. OpenAI announced 800 million weekly active users in October 2025, 900 million in February 2026, and passed 1 billion by the end of July.
61% say their view of AI-generated content has become more positive
More than half of respondents noted their view of AI-generated content has become more positive over the past year. 38% say it’s somewhat more positive and 23% say it’s much more positive.
While we don’t have data on exactly why that is, a combination of model improvements, operational efficiencies, and building better systems likely had some impact.
As an example, as Ahrefs’ Director of Content Marketing, Ryan utilizes 23 skill-file process as part of his content engineering workflow.
Guides like these acorss the web have likely inspired people to improve the outputs they can generate.
AI is helping marketers produce content faster
85% of marketers using AI say they’re producing content faster since adopting it: 47.9% say they’re much quicker and 37.1% say they’re slightly quicker.