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AI Studies

28.6% of Canadian Car Dealership Reviews are Likely AI in 2025

How is AI impacting Canadian car dealership reviews? We analyzed review data from 2020 to 2025 with our proprietary Originality.ai AI detection tool to find out!

For many potential buyers, car dealership reviews play a key role in deciding where to purchase a vehicle. However, the rise of generative AI tools raises a critical question: 

What happens when these reviews are no longer authentic, truthful, and actually based on past customer experiences?

With just a single prompt on an AI platform, it’s now possible to generate hundreds, even thousands, of reviews that can sound like real human experiences.

Although a ton of solid AI reviews may benefit the dealership, customers aren’t looking to make car purchases based on something fictional. They read reviews to learn about real experiences from real people.

So, a rise in fake, machine-generated car dealership reviews could influence how consumers shop for vehicles.

To investigate this, this study explores the prevalence of AI-generated reviews in the Canadian car sales industry and assesses its implications for consumer trust and business reputations.

Objectives of the Study

This study aimed to:

  • Identify the rate of AI-generated car dealership reviews across Canada
  • Track how that rate changed from 2020 to 2025
  • Compare the prevalence of AI car dealership reviews across different cities
  • Consider the implications of these findings on consumer trust

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

  • 28.6% of Canadian car dealership reviews are likely AI-written in 2025
  • From 2020 to 2025, overall, 14.8% of reviews were likely AI-generated 
  • Cities with the most vs. the least AI-generated reviews:
    • Edmonton had the highest proportion of likely AI reviews at 20.4% 
    • Quebec City had the least at 6.2%
  • AI-classified reviews were most often 5-star (71%), suggesting that businesses may use AI to boost their online reputation. 
    • 1-star reviews were the second most common (26.5%), highlighting that AI can be used not only to uplift reputation but to create a negative impact as well.
AI Car Dealership Reviews Infographic

AI Canadian Car Dealership Reviews Saw a Sharp Increase From 2022 to 2025

AI Car Dealership Reviews Infographic

From 2020 to 2022, AI-generated reviews in Canadian car dealerships remained minimal, with rates under 3%. 

However, a noticeable surge occurs from 2022 to 2023 (see the graph depicted above). This sudden spike isn’t particularly surprising, as it just so happens to coincide with the year that ChatGPT launched, in 2022. 

In fact, the release seemed to be something of a turning point, as the rate continued to climb rapidly from 2023 to 2025.

In 2025, AI-generated reviews are likely to account for 28.6% of car dealership reviews. In other words, just under 1 in 3 reviews have likely been written by AI.

In 2025, 28.6% of Car Dealership Reviews in Canada Are Likely AI

AI Car Dealership Reviews in 2025

The finding that AI-generated car dealership reviews reached an all-time high of 28.6% in Canada reflects not only the growing accessibility of generative AI tools but also how businesses and potentially users are choosing to apply them.

However, AI reviews aren’t specific to car sales companies. They’ve been increasing in many industries, even showing up in lawyers' office reviews and healthcare clinic reviews.

Although the rate of these reviews seems to have reached a peak in 2025 (so far), their impact on consumers isn’t limited to this year. 

Looking at the overall rate across Canada from 2020 to 2025, we found that 14.8% of reviews were likely AI, with AI levels remaining low (below 3%) until 2022 (when ChatGPT launched), and then rising.

Of course, this means that overall, 85.2% of reviews were human-written. However, such a significant (not to mention growing) presence of AI content shouldn’t be ignored.

A rate of 14.8% suggests that more than 1 in 10 reviews over the study period aren’t the result of real human experience, which isn’t great for consumer trust. 

If buyers relied on reviews when choosing where to purchase a vehicle, they may have made those decisions based on misinformation.

Edmonton Had the Most AI Car Dealership Reviews, and Quebec City Had the Least

AI Car Dealership Reviews by City

As demonstrated in the graph above, there are small yet significant variations in the prevalence of AI-generated reviews between several of the targeted Canadian cities. 

However, a sizable 14.2% difference emerges between the cities in the first and last positions.

  • Edmonton showed the highest proportion, with 20.4% of reviews classified as likely AI-generated. 
  • Quebec City, on the other hand, showed the lowest rate, with only 6.2% likely to have been created by AI.

5-Star AI Car Dealership Reviews Are Most Common, with 1-Star Reviews in 2nd Place

AI Car Dealership Reviews by Star Rating

An overwhelming 71.1% of AI-classified reviews in Canadian car dealerships received 5-star ratings. It’s a big number, but not a surprising one, as we found a similar positive trend in our G2 reviews study. 

Such a large proportion of positive AI reviews suggests that businesses may be generating them to improve their reputation and drive sales.

That said, we observed another trend at the other end of the spectrum: 26.5% of likely AI reviews received 1-star ratings. 

Taken together, the data suggest that “extreme” ratings (either 1 or 5 stars) are more likely to be AI-generated than those that fall in the 2-4 star range, a pattern also noted in our Amazon reviews study.

Overall, the presence of both overly positive and negative AI-generated car dealership reviews highlights the need for stronger safeguards to be put in place to ensure the ethical use of generative AI and the authenticity of online reviews.

Implications of AI-generated Car Dealership Reviews

The rise in AI-generated car dealership reviews doesn’t just affect the businesses themselves. It also has a number of potential implications for consumers and review platforms.

Let’s begin with consumers. 

If buyers can’t tell the difference between real, human-written reviews and fake, AI-generated ones, they may begin to lose trust in reviews entirely. 

Then there’s the impact on businesses.

Car dealership may adopt AI themselves and start churning out positive reviews, creating an artificially inflated reputation.

Alternatively, an influx of negative AI-generated reviews could result in a negative impact on business reputation. 

If the rising trend of AI-generated car dealership reviews continues, it will raise difficult questions about authenticity, transparency, and trust. 

This, in turn, could force consumers, businesses, and platforms to rethink their current stance on online reviews entirely.

Final Thoughts

This study highlights the rapid rise of AI-generated reviews in the car sales industry, particularly in Canada. However, it also raises major concerns about the trust and authenticity of online consumer feedback. 

It is therefore crucial to implement measures and moderation tools to help ensure transparency and the credibility of online reviews if buyers are to continue using them to inform their purchasing decisions.

To help protect the authenticity of reviews, car dealerships can:

  • Promote verified reviews only by prompting customers to leave feedback through post-sale emails or secure portals linked to real transactions.
  • Monitor and flag suspicious reviews, whether through tools like Originality.ai’s AI Checker or even sudden spikes in the number of 1- or 5-star reviews
  • Be transparent about their review policies by publicly stating they don’t buy, generate, or otherwise manipulate their reviews, and report fake ones when detected

Buyers can help avoid the influence of AI-generated reviews on their purchasing decisions, too. 

If you want to know whether the review you’re reading has likely been generated by AI, try Originality.ai’s AI Detector today.

Curious about whether AI reviews are impacting other platforms? Read more:

Methodology

Data Source:
Review data was collected using a Google Maps-based business data API from RapidAPI, focusing on car dealerships in 10 major Canadian cities (e.g., Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal). 

A total of 100 dealerships were selected, after cleaning (removing duplicates, nulls, and irrelevant data), 2,000+ reviews remained. Only reviews from 2020 onwards with 100+ words were used in the study.

AI Detection Method:
The reviews were analyzed using the Originality.AI API, which provided two key metrics:

  • AI Confidence Score: Probability (0–1) that a review is AI-generated.
  • AI Classification Score: Binary label (0 = human, 1 = AI). Anything above 50% AI is classified as AI.

Each review included metadata such as dealership name, city, ratings, review text, and AI scores, forming the basis for further analysis in the article.

Madeleine Lambert

Madeleine Lambert

Madeleine Lambert is the Director of Marketing and Sales at Originality.ai, with over a decade of experience in SEO and content creation. She previously owned and operated a successful content marketing agency, which she scaled and exited. Madeleine specializes in digital PR—contact her for media inquiries and story collaborations.

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