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Every insights leader right now is navigating the same impossible question: how much do you trust the machine?
At The Quirk's Event - Dallas 2026, Suzy brought together three practitioners who are living that question daily – Matt Frampton, Senior Director of Consumer, Shopper, and Customer Insights & Analytics at Crayola, Aneesha Nilakantan, Director of Behavioral Science and Innovation at Samsung, and Lissa Crisp, Director of Consumer Insights at Generous Brands. What followed was one of the most candid conversations we've had about the real state of AI in consumer insights.
No hype. No vendor spin. Just honest practitioners talking shop.
Here's what we learned.
AI is a behind-the-scenes player – not the star of the show
Across the board, each panelist described the same pattern: AI doing its best work out of the spotlight.
At Crayola, a brand that has been synonymous with imagination for 125 years, Matt Frampton was clear that the brand's core hasn't changed – and won't. "The hands-on, tactile feel is always going to remain relevant." Where AI has genuinely moved the needle is in the research and insight work that happens before anything reaches a consumer. More qualitative, conversational research. Faster synthesis. Smarter concept development.
Lissa Crisp, a team of one supporting four brands at Generous Brands, put it plainly: "I use Suzy templates to start, export it, add a few things, and I might turn to ChatGPT to say, hey, I want to ask this survey question – give me five ways I could ask this." AI as a brainstorming partner, not a replacement for judgment.
Samsung's Aneesha Nilakantan framed it as an acceleration of an existing vision: "Technology will be successful when it's intuitive, embedded in your day-to-day life, and acts as your personalized companion. AI just accelerates that." The goal isn't to make the AI visible – it's to make the experience feel seamless.
The risk isn't bad AI. It's overconfident humans.
This was the thread that tied the whole conversation together. When asked where automation creates risk, none of the panelists pointed at the technology itself. They pointed at us.
Aneesha articulated it most sharply: "The biggest risk is overconfidence leading to quicker decision-making. It's so easy to be like, 'I have this question, now I have an answer.' And I think that is always going to be a challenge when we're building experiences for people."
Matt echoed the sentiment from an organizational standpoint. "Folks can prompt an engine, it spits out insight, and now all of a sudden they're a subject expert on what that insight is. It sounds right – and then they run with it." The answer, he argued, is guardrails: clear internal policies about how AI outputs are presented, with appropriate confidence levels attached.
Lissa went a step further, naming the cultural dynamic that makes this harder to solve: "I think there are people at my company using AI with good intentions but not the right way – and not saying anything because they're worried about being perceived as taking shortcuts." The unlock, she argued, isn't more AI policy. It's more transparency. "I've made sure to tell people: here's when I use it, here's when I don't, here's what data I give it, here's what I don't."
The competitive advantage is how you use it, not whether you use it
When the panel was asked what happens when AI becomes the baseline – when every competitor has access to the same tools – the answers converged on the same insight: the edge isn't the technology. It's the discipline around it.
"The competitive advantage is having AI built into your process at very specific points," Lissa said, "so that you're moving fast without taking the risk."
For Samsung, the north star is a single word: companion. "That helps anchor us in terms of how we think about how we want the user to interact with it – but also how we want ourselves to interact with it," Aneesha explained. Terminology shapes culture, and culture shapes decisions.
For Crayola, the edge lies in using AI as an inspiration engine for kids – not a replacement for creativity. Matt described a phenomenon that will resonate with every parent in the room: as kids get older, they self-identify as "not creative" and disengage from creative activities. "AI can inspire in ways where that's not truly the case. Joy over judgment." That's not a tech story. That's a brand story powered by technology.
What "human-centered AI" actually looks like in practice
Theory is easy. What does this look like when you're in a sprint, under-resourced, and staring down a product launch deadline?
Lissa offered the clearest example. During a recent product innovation project, her team used foundational qualitative research to identify territories and unmet needs – all human-led. Then, in the brainstorming phase that typically happens between qual and concept testing, they brought in an AI tool to generate ideas. "It did give us some really good ideas that tested well. But would we go to it just because we're in a hurry and on a budget? Absolutely not. That's big stakes for a company."
Aneesha described how Samsung uses AI not just to model past behavior, but to surface intent – the questions consumers are asking, the hacks they're searching for. "If they're looking for an off-label use, that's actually a product opportunity." AI as signal-detector, human judgment as signal-interpreter.
Matt pointed to Crayola's upcoming Story Creator product as a proof of concept: a creative tablet where kids draw however they want – crayons, markers, paint – and then add their own voice to bring their story to life. "That blob on the sheet? It's a superhero flying through the sky. Now you understand." Technology that enhances the human experience rather than replacing it.
The final question: what does a true partnership look like?
"Swim lanes," said Lissa. Know where AI plays, know where humans play, and know where they intersect – because the intersection can be the most generative space of all, as long as it's intentional.
"Complementary," said Matt. AI that gets kids to spend more time being creative, not less.
"Swim lanes plus transparency," said Aneesha. Define the roles, and then be radically honest about how you're using the tools.
The bottom line
The brands doing this well aren't the ones with the most sophisticated AI stack. They're the ones who've answered a harder question: what is AI for, in my specific context, for my specific consumer?
Speed and efficiency are table stakes. The real advantage – the one that compounds over time – is knowing when to trust the output and when to trust the human. That judgment can't be automated.
At Suzy, we believe the strongest business decisions come from truly understanding people. AI can get you there faster. But empathy, context, and judgment are still the variables that matter most. Let’s chat.
