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

TL;DR

This study finds that perceived quality does not differ between AI-generated and human news, but disclosure of AI involvement increases short-term engagement without affecting future willingness to read AI news.

Contribution

It reveals that AI involvement disclosure boosts immediate engagement, challenging assumptions that quality perceptions drive willingness to read AI-generated news.

Findings

All news articles perceived as equal in quality

Disclosure of AI involvement increases willingness to read in the short term

No increase in willingness to read AI news in the future

Abstract

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.