Welcome to the “Made With” Era

In business, branding, and marketing, disclosing credit has always been simple: it didn’t happen.

Brands made things. Brands got credit. The agencies, consultants, and platforms behind the work stayed invisible. There wasn’t any sharing of credit.

And everyone was fine with that arrangement.

Consumers didn’t ask. Businesses didn’t tell. It worked because the incentives all pointed the same way.

Now, like with so many other things that our AI-infused world is changing, we’re about to see a major transformation in how brands share credit for their work.

There are two main reasons for this:

1. It is all of us. We, as humans, want more transparency into how AI is used to create the work we interact with.
2. It is the AI companies themselves. They want to build their own brands while sharing in the outcomes they help co-create.

Let’s dig into each force.

Force #1: We want disclosure

The pushback against AI-assisted work is most dominant in the world of branding.

My friend David Mattin recently argued that only people can build brands that other people care about — which lands harder in 2026 than it would have two years ago.

My other friend, Pete Andrews, launched Part Human, a branding agency built on the premise that the human contribution is now the brand.

Adweek recently put a spotlight on how brands are currently stuck virtue-signaling about AI rather than just disclosing it.

The platforms are picking sides. LinkedIn recently said that it doesn’t want your AI slop anymore (thank goodness; LinkedIn needs to make many improvements right now). YouTube just said it would be more proactive about identifying AI videos with highly visible AI disclaiming labels.

Tools for disclosing and using AI transparently are gaining popularity. Content Credentials and AI nutrition labels let people look under the hood.

This force is on the rise because, more than ever, we want to build our own identities through our connections with brands. We’re still human. We want to form those bonds with other humans and their creations. Our building, common expectation is that brands will share how they are using AI in their work. We will expect this to be shared transparently — visibly — before anyone has to ask.

Force #2: AI companies want credit too

This force has two sub-forces within it.

First, AI companies are after something bigger than user subscriptions and token revenue.

OpenAI recently began offering tokens to Y Combinator startups in exchange for equity. Tokens for shares, usage for upside. OpenAI wants skin in what the tokens help build, not just payment for the tokens themselves.

Bessemer’s AI pricing and monetization playbook makes the broader case, and a16z called this shift in December 2024 in a newsletter on outcome-based pricing.

Beyond tokenmaxing, AI wants in on the outcome itself — meaning AI wants credit for its work.

The second force is the brand-building race these AI platforms are in.

Gemini vs. ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Copilot is not just a competition over capabilities. These brands are in a competition for association — over which model gets credited when something great gets made.

Together, these two sub-forces — a focus on outcomes and a focus on brand visibility — are driving a narrative for how AI brands can co-exist with the brands they are helping.

Welcome to the “made with” era — aka, ingredient branding 2.0

So, what does it look like when customers want transparency, and AI companies want credit?

We’re seeing that the first answer is badging.

Human collectives are exploring badge versions of AI contributions.

On the platform side, Base44 and Lovable both stamp “Made with” on the apps built on their platforms.

In many ways, we are entering a new era of Intel Inside-style branding.

But this new era of Intel Inside-style branding will be dramatically different. Intel Inside badges were part of an ingredient branding movement. They were badges for passive hardware components. This was like branding an engine in a car. The fabric in my favorite backpack. These were ingredients that help make a beer taste better.

They were not collaborators, co-thinkers, or co-creators of the end product. They were ingredients within the brand’s creation.

This is where ingredient branding is about to be reimagined. AI companies do not want to be just an ingredient within a brand’s creation. AI companies want to be recognized as something much more complicated: credited co-creators and collaborators.

But brands don’t share credit with their co-creators

There are no public “made with McKinsey” labels on business strategies.

There are no “made with Ogilvy” stickers on a brand’s magazine ads.

And, unfortunately for my teams, there are no “made with Opus Agency” credits on the experiences and events we produce for our clients around the world.

Brands want full credit for their brand experiences. They always have. Sharing an ingredient was acceptable. A chip, an engine, or a material is acceptable. But sharing credit with a co-creator is a different ask entirely.

Now, businesses are caught in the middle and being forced into a new era of branding.

The credit sharing, “made with” race, is already on

Consumers are asking about how AI was used to create what they buy, read, and watch.

AI companies are pushing for their own visibility and credit.

Brands don’t have a playbook for this yet.

The “made with” era is coming to branding, and with it will be the experiments, prototypes, and pilots that will set tomorrow’s most beloved brands in the lead.

It is a new race — and it is already on. Let’s see which brands will figure this out first.