People prefer AI art more when they think a human made it
Beauty Is Human: When People Love AI-Generated Art, They Think a Human Made It
Human-Computer InteractionArtificial IntelligenceComputers and Society
Summary
People look at pictures and try to guess if a human or AI made them. This study found that when people really like a picture, they are more likely to think it was made by a human, even if it was AI-generated. This happens because people enjoy art more if they believe a human created it, showing that our taste is linked to who we think made the work. The pattern holds true whether the art is AI-made or human-made, and across different kinds of art including poems.
What this means in practice
- •For digital artists: Design AI art presentation to emphasize human-like qualities to increase viewer appreciation when authorship is unknown.
- •For policy makers: Develop AI art disclosure rules that consider how hidden authorship affects public appreciation and bias against AI works.
Authors
Zihan Chen, Di Zhu, Lei Nico Zheng
Abstract
Generative AI now produces images and poems that people cannot reliably distinguish from human-made work, so people often judge for themselves who made a work. We examine how these perceived-authorship judgments relate to aesthetic preference. In a public online AI Art Turing Test, 11,123 people judged whether each of 50 pictures (26 AI-generated) was made by a human and were asked for their favourite. Among the 9,152 respondents who judged their favourite, a picture was 22.1 percentage points more likely to be judged human-made when it was the respondent's favourite, holding respondent and picture fixed. The association was similar for AI-generated and human-made favourites, was positive for all 50 pictures, and appeared under every reported detection strategy. Respondents most negative about AI art chose fewer AI-generated favourites (47% against 60% among the most positive) but more often believed them human-made, partly because others also judged those pictures human. As a result, in every opinion group a third to two fifths of respondents named an AI-generated favourite they believed human-made. A reanalysis of a published experiment on AI-generated poetry, in which 230 people rated each poem before judging its authorship, found the same pattern, although the AI poems were rated higher. When provenance is hidden, liking and perceived human authorship travel together, consistent with aesthetic response serving as evidence of a human maker and with beliefs about the maker shaping enjoyment. The findings qualify research on bias against AI art, which typically uses explicit labels, and inform AI disclosure policy.