Willingness to Read AI-Generated News Is Not Driven by Their Perceived Quality

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gilardi, Fabrizio, Di Lorenzo, Sabrina, Ezzaini, Juri, Santa, Beryl, Streiff, Benjamin, Zurfluh, Eric, Hoes, Emma
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Gilardi, Fabrizio
Di Lorenzo, Sabrina
Ezzaini, Juri
Santa, Beryl
Streiff, Benjamin
Zurfluh, Eric
Hoes, Emma
author_facet Gilardi, Fabrizio
Di Lorenzo, Sabrina
Ezzaini, Juri
Santa, Beryl
Streiff, Benjamin
Zurfluh, Eric
Hoes, Emma
contents The advancement of artificial intelligence has led to its application in many areas, including news media, which makes it crucial to understand public reception of AI-generated news. This preregistered study investigates (i) the perceived quality of AI-assisted and AI-generated versus human-generated news articles, (ii) whether disclosure of AI's involvement in generating these news articles influences engagement with them, and (iii) whether such awareness affects the willingness to read AI-generated articles in the future. We conducted a survey experiment with 599 Swiss participants, who evaluated the credibility, readability, and expertise of news articles either written by journalists (control group), rewritten by AI (AI-assisted group), or entirely written by AI (AI-generated group). Our results indicate that all articles were perceived to be of equal quality. When participants in the treatment groups were subsequently made aware of AI's role, they expressed a higher willingness to continue reading the articles than participants in the control group. However, they were not more willing to read AI-generated news in the future. These results suggest that aversion to AI usage in news media is not primarily rooted in a perceived lack of quality, and that by disclosing using AI, journalists could induce more short-term engagement.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_03500
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Willingness to Read AI-Generated News Is Not Driven by Their Perceived Quality
Gilardi, Fabrizio
Di Lorenzo, Sabrina
Ezzaini, Juri
Santa, Beryl
Streiff, Benjamin
Zurfluh, Eric
Hoes, Emma
Computers and Society
Artificial Intelligence
The advancement of artificial intelligence has led to its application in many areas, including news media, which makes it crucial to understand public reception of AI-generated news. This preregistered study investigates (i) the perceived quality of AI-assisted and AI-generated versus human-generated news articles, (ii) whether disclosure of AI's involvement in generating these news articles influences engagement with them, and (iii) whether such awareness affects the willingness to read AI-generated articles in the future. We conducted a survey experiment with 599 Swiss participants, who evaluated the credibility, readability, and expertise of news articles either written by journalists (control group), rewritten by AI (AI-assisted group), or entirely written by AI (AI-generated group). Our results indicate that all articles were perceived to be of equal quality. When participants in the treatment groups were subsequently made aware of AI's role, they expressed a higher willingness to continue reading the articles than participants in the control group. However, they were not more willing to read AI-generated news in the future. These results suggest that aversion to AI usage in news media is not primarily rooted in a perceived lack of quality, and that by disclosing using AI, journalists could induce more short-term engagement.
title Willingness to Read AI-Generated News Is Not Driven by Their Perceived Quality
topic Computers and Society
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.03500