Study Finds People Prefer AI-Written Short Stories and Can't Identify Them
alexvoica · x · 2026-08-11
A study highlighted by New Scientist reveals that people actually prefer short stories created by AI over those written by humans, and their ability to distinguish between the two is no better than chance.
Researchers at Villanova University recruited 1682 US-representative adults for the experiment. Participants were assigned to read stories either written by humans or generated by AI (using ChatGPT 4.0), and were falsely informed about the true authorship.
Data showed that participants who read AI-generated stories rated them higher in quality, with an average score of 1.54 (on a -3 to 3 scale), compared to 0.97 for human-written stories. AI stories also scored significantly higher in absorption. Interestingly, if participants were falsely told a story was human-written, their appreciation of it increased even further.
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