Do readers prefer AI-generated Italian short stories?

TL;DR

This study explores reader preferences for AI-generated versus human-authored Italian short stories, finding a slight preference for AI texts with no significant demographic influence, challenging assumptions about human-authored fiction preference.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that readers may prefer AI-generated stories over human-authored ones, with implications for literary and AI-generated content evaluation.

Findings

AI stories received higher ratings

Readers slightly preferred AI texts

No demographic factors significantly influenced preferences

Abstract

This study investigates whether readers prefer AI-generated short stories in Italian over one written by a renowned Italian author. In a blind setup, 20 participants read and evaluated three stories, two created with ChatGPT-4o and one by Alberto Moravia, without being informed of their origin. To explore potential influencing factors, reading habits and demographic data, comprising age, gender, education and first language, were also collected. The results showed that the AI-written texts received slightly higher average ratings and were more frequently preferred, although differences were modest. No statistically significant associations were found between text preference and demographic or reading-habit variables. These findings challenge assumptions about reader preference for human-authored fiction and raise questions about the necessity of synthetic-text editing in literary contexts.