Willingness to Read AI-Generated News Is Not Driven by Their Perceived Quality
Fabrizio Gilardi, Sabrina Di Lorenzo, Juri Ezzaini, Beryl Santa, Benjamin Streiff, Eric Zurfluh, Emma Hoes
TL;DR
This preregistered study investigates how AI involvement in news production affects perceived quality, immediate engagement after disclosure, and future openness to AI-generated news. Using a between-subjects online experiment with 599 Swiss participants, the authors compare human-written, AI-assisted, and AI-generated excerpts from Swiss politics, assessing expertise, readability, and credibility before revealing authorship. They find no differences in perceived quality across article types, but disclosure of AI involvement increases willingness to continue reading the specific article, with no corresponding rise in long-term willingness to read AI-generated news. The results suggest that trust and transparency—not content quality—drive attitudes toward AI-generated journalism, underscoring the importance of careful disclosure strategies and human oversight in practice.
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.