AI-written stories preferred over human-written ones: Study

Readers gave the highest ratings to stories generated by artificial intelligence (AI), even when they believed the stories had been written by humans, according to a new study.

The study, published by Cambridge University Press, examined whether people aged 18 to 81 could distinguish between short stories written by humans and those generated by AI.

Led by researchers at Villanova University (VU) in the United States, the study found that participants generally could not tell the difference.

Senior author Dr Deena Weisberg of VU's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences said public perceptions of AI's capabilities may be increasingly outdated.

The researchers also examined how participants rated the appeal and quality of the stories and whether they could identify AI-generated content.

"We assume creative writing requires uniquely human qualities, such as emotional understanding and lived experience, which leads people to underestimate AI's capabilities," Weisberg said.

For the study, researchers selected three fictional short stories written by published authors and three stories generated by ChatGPT.

In the first experiment, 1,682 participants read a story and were either correctly or incorrectly told that it had been written by AI or a human. They were then asked to rate the story's quality and how engaging they found it.

In the second and third experiments, involving 424 and 481 participants respectively, each participant read one human-written story and one AI-generated story without being told who had written them. They were then asked to identify the authors.

In our study, participants gave the highest ratings to stories that they had been told were written by humans but which were actually written by AI.

Weisberg

"I'd argue that this reveals a bias towards narratives written by real people."

The researchers also found that participants who said they had greater knowledge of AI were better at identifying AI-generated writing. However, those who reported having greater expertise in literature were not better at distinguishing between human and AI writing.

Participants were also asked about their experience with fictional literature and AI platforms. AI-generated stories received higher ratings for quality.

"AI writing tends to be clearer, more direct and easier to process," Weisberg said.

"By contrast, human-written stories are often more subtle and complex."

She suggested that people may generally prefer predictable writing because more difficult or subtle material requires greater mental effort.