Can AI be a moral victim? The role of moral patiency and ownership perceptions in ethical judgments of using AI-generated content

TL;DR

This study investigates how perceptions of moral patiency and ownership influence ethical judgments of reusing AI-generated content, revealing that people judge AI reuse as less unethical due to lower perceived harm capacity and higher ownership attribution.

Contribution

It demonstrates that moral judgments about AI content reuse are affected by perceptions of AI's moral patiency and ownership, highlighting psychological mechanisms behind ethical disengagement.

Findings

Copying AI-generated work is judged less unethical than copying human work.

Lower perceptions of AI's capacity to suffer harm mediate leniency in judgments.

Anthropomorphic cues influence moral evaluations by affecting ownership perceptions.

Abstract

The growing use of generative AI raises ethical concerns about authorship and plagiarism. This study examines how people judge the reuse of AI-generated content, focusing on moral patiency and ownership perceptions. In an experiment, participants evaluated two substantively similar manuscripts in which the original source was described as authored by a human, an AI system, or an AI agent with a human-like name. Results showed that copying AI-generated work was judged less unethical, less plagiaristic, and less guilt-inducing than copying human-authored work. Mediation analyses revealed that this leniency stemmed from lower perceptions of AI's capacity to suffer harm (moral patiency) and greater ownership attributed to the human writer reusing AI-generated content. Anthropomorphic cues shaped moral evaluations indirectly by reducing perceived ownership. These findings shed light on how people morally disengage when using AI-generated work and highlight differences in how ethical judgments are applied to human versus AI-created content.