This news release did not use artificial intelligence—and even if it did, you wouldn’t suspect it.
Image: Solen Feyissa - Pexels
These days, you may be reading AI-written news more often than you think. The same can be said for emails, texts, and social media sites, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan and Duke University.
The study found that undisclosed AI use does not trigger suspicion among people. When AI use is disclosed or strongly suspected (when people already pay a lot of attention to AI), people typically judge senders negatively, said Andras Molnar, U-M assistant professor of psychology and study co-author.
“For example, when we already suspect that someone generated their message using AI, we tend to think of them as less friendly, less trustworthy, less authentic and so on, compared to when the same text is genuinely human-written,” he said. “This ‘AI penalty’ has been widely documented in past studies.”
What the “AI penalty” suggests is that people, on average, lean toward the negative interpretation that focuses on the person (e.g., the person was lazy) instead of the more positive interpretation that takes into account the situation (e.g., there was a lot of time pressure).
However, under more realistic conditions, audiences may be uncertain, or even completely unaware, of communicators’ potential use of AI. Molnar, along with lead author Jiaqi Zhu of Duke, conducted two online experiments of more than 1,300 U.S. adults to examine how both explicit disclosure and uncertainty regarding AI use affect social impressions in realistic communication contexts (e.g., email, social media, texting).
Their research, published in Computers in Human Behavior, highlights that even though there are these massive penalties in social interactions when AI use is known, people don’t naturally suspect AI use: Participants in realistic situations treated messages of unknown origin as if they were known to be genuinely human-written. In other words, those who use AI as a shortcut most likely get away with it and keep their positive impressions.
Molnar said that concerns about widespread rejection of AI-assisted communication may be overstated for now, though attitudes could shift as AI awareness grows.
Study: Blissful (A)Ignorance: Despite the widespread adoption of AI in communication, people do not suspect AI use in realistic contexts
This post was originally published by the University of Michigan News and is republished here with permission.
Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.
Read next:
• Content Marketers Embrace AI in Content Creation
• A better method for identifying overconfident large language models
These days, you may be reading AI-written news more often than you think. The same can be said for emails, texts, and social media sites, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan and Duke University.
The study found that undisclosed AI use does not trigger suspicion among people. When AI use is disclosed or strongly suspected (when people already pay a lot of attention to AI), people typically judge senders negatively, said Andras Molnar, U-M assistant professor of psychology and study co-author.
“For example, when we already suspect that someone generated their message using AI, we tend to think of them as less friendly, less trustworthy, less authentic and so on, compared to when the same text is genuinely human-written,” he said. “This ‘AI penalty’ has been widely documented in past studies.”
What the “AI penalty” suggests is that people, on average, lean toward the negative interpretation that focuses on the person (e.g., the person was lazy) instead of the more positive interpretation that takes into account the situation (e.g., there was a lot of time pressure).
However, under more realistic conditions, audiences may be uncertain, or even completely unaware, of communicators’ potential use of AI. Molnar, along with lead author Jiaqi Zhu of Duke, conducted two online experiments of more than 1,300 U.S. adults to examine how both explicit disclosure and uncertainty regarding AI use affect social impressions in realistic communication contexts (e.g., email, social media, texting).
Their research, published in Computers in Human Behavior, highlights that even though there are these massive penalties in social interactions when AI use is known, people don’t naturally suspect AI use: Participants in realistic situations treated messages of unknown origin as if they were known to be genuinely human-written. In other words, those who use AI as a shortcut most likely get away with it and keep their positive impressions.
Molnar said that concerns about widespread rejection of AI-assisted communication may be overstated for now, though attitudes could shift as AI awareness grows.
Study: Blissful (A)Ignorance: Despite the widespread adoption of AI in communication, people do not suspect AI use in realistic contexts
This post was originally published by the University of Michigan News and is republished here with permission.
Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.
Read next:
• Content Marketers Embrace AI in Content Creation
• A better method for identifying overconfident large language models
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