Preach without practice: People say they prefer human content but behave otherwise

A new study reveals a surprising gap between people’s stated preferences for human-created content and their actual consumption behaviors when it comes to AI-generated stories. This discrepancy highlights important questions about the future economic impact of AI on creative industries, as consumers may claim to value human creativity while their spending and engagement patterns suggest otherwise.

The big picture: Research shows that while people explicitly prefer and rate human-authored stories more highly than AI-generated ones, their willingness to invest time and money in reading these stories doesn’t differ based on perceived authorship.

Key details: Researchers used ChatGPT-4o to generate a short story in the style of acclaimed fiction author Jason Brown, then presented it to a nationally representative sample of over 650 participants.

• Half the participants were correctly told the story was AI-generated, while the other half were led to believe it was written by a human author.
• The experiment measured quality ratings across dimensions like predictability and emotional engagement, along with participants’ willingness to sacrifice compensation or time to continue reading.

What they found: Participants who knew they were reading AI-generated content rated the story more negatively across multiple dimensions including predictability, authenticity, and evocativeness.

• These findings align with a growing body of research showing bias against AI-created content in various creative domains including visual art, music, and poetry.

The contradiction: Despite lower quality ratings, participants demonstrated identical behaviors regardless of the story’s labeled authorship.

• Participants were willing to spend the same amount of money and time to finish reading the story whether they believed it was human or AI-written.
• The average reading time for the AI-labeled story was not significantly different from the human-labeled version.

Behind the numbers: Almost 40% of participants claimed they would have paid less for AI-written content, revealing a significant gap between people’s stated preferences and their actual consumer behavior.

Why this matters: This discrepancy between perception and behavior has profound implications for creative industries employing millions worldwide, suggesting consumers might not actually alter their consumption patterns as AI-generated content becomes more prevalent.