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A study, conducted by researchers from the Institute of Labor Economics at the University of Bonn found, that people prefer small works written by real authors, but most still spend the same amount of time and money on reading them, generated by artificial intelligence.
As part of the study, the researchers asked themselves, how authors will earn money when a large number of AI-generated works start to hit the market. They instructed ChatGPT 4 to generate a short story in the style of the famous science fiction author Jason Brown.
After that, the researchers selected volunteers who were offered $3.5 per reading and evaluating history, generated by AI. However, only half of the participants were told that the story was created by artificial intelligence, while the rest — were made to think, that the story was actually written by Jason Brown.
After reading the first half of the story, participants were asked to rate the quality of the story based on characteristics that included: predictability, emotional engagement, and feelings evoked by the story. In addition, the researchers tested people’s willingness to pay to read the story to the end in two ways. Volunteers were asked how much of the remuneration for participating in the study they were willing to give up, and how much time they were willing to spend reading the text.
The researchers emphasize that the group of volunteers who were told in advance that text, generated by AI, gave the story a much more negative assessment than those, who were led to believe that the work was written by Jason Brown. According to the authors of the study, this shows that many people are biased against artificial intelligence when it comes to fine art, music, and literature.
However, the participants expressed their willingness to spend the same amount of time and money to read a story to the end, regardless of whether it was generated by AI or written by a real person. Participants also did not spend less time on average actually reading a story created by artificial intelligence. Later, when asked, almost 40% of participants said they would pay less if the same story was created by an AI rather than a real person.
The researchers say their findings call into question past research. The researchers emphasized that while the potential of artificial intelligence to realize creative work is still at an early stage, there is already a large amount of literature on the market. The researchers emphasized that while the potential of artificial intelligence to realize creative work is still at an early stage, a large amount of AI-generated literature has already appeared on the market. This recently prompted the Authors Guild to introduce special rules for labeling.
«Regardless of how the scenarios play out, our findings suggest that the human creative journey may be more complex than previous research has suggested. Although consumers may hold beliefs about the intrinsic value of human labor, many of them seem unwilling to invest their money in accordance with their beliefs», — the authors conclude.
The study was published in the journal The Conversation
Source: TechXplore