# Man vs. machine: Multi-country experimental evidence on the quality and perceptions of AI-generated research blog content

## TL;DR

This study explores how AI-generated research blogs are perceived compared to human-written ones across 11 countries, finding minimal differences in quality when AI use is disclosed.

## Contribution

The novel contribution is empirical evidence on perceptions of AI-generated research blogs across diverse countries and stakeholder audiences.

## Key findings

- AI-generated blogs are rated marginally lower in quality than human-written ones, but disclosure of AI use mitigates this effect.
- Highly educated stakeholders prefer slightly more technical summaries, suggesting audience preferences influence perceptions of accessibility.
- Disclosure of AI authorship does not reduce readers’ likelihood of engaging with the blog or their beliefs about others’ engagement.

## Abstract

Academic research is not always available in a form that is accessible or engaging to a non-academic audience, hindering readers’ engagement with it. Non-academics, even if highly educated and policy experts in their fields, tend to need research to be presented in a more accessible way than peer-reviewed articles — one example being non-technical blogs. However, writing these requires some effort from researchers. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can make academic research easier to understand by summarizing and simplifying academic papers much more quickly than researchers can, making it easier for researchers to produce such summaries. However, disclosure of AI use may lower readers’ perceived quality of and trust in the blog, generating a trade-off for the researcher. In this paper, we evaluate an 11-country experiment cross-randomizing a blog’s actual and reported author as AI or human. We find that research stakeholders rate the quality of AI-generated blogs marginally lower than human-written ones (p <  0.1), but disclosure of AI use offsets the negative effect (p <  0.1). The study sample consists of policy-relevant stakeholders who typically engage with academic research; they are highly educated and include thematic specialists. Indeed, findings indicate that this audience interprets “accessibility” differently, preferring slightly more technical summaries of research. The nature of the respondents may thus explain the particular findings in this study, suggesting that researchers should tailor their prompts for their intended audience. There are no effects on readers’ reported likelihood of engaging with the blog or on beliefs about others predicted engagement with it. Consequently, we hypothesize that researchers can leverage AI to communicate their research more easily without a penalty from disclosing its use.