Text comprehension moderates cognitive biases toward AI authorship in literary content

The growing potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in generating artistic products has stimulated an increasing multidisciplinary debate. Beyond discussions on the nature of AI creativity itself, numerous studies report that people are negatively biased towards AI-labelled artistic contents. Here we asked whether this bias is modulated by beholders’ approach to the artifact, by exploring whether and how the level of comprehension—an index of participant’s engagement—could influence this bias in literary context.

We asked participants to rate the social prestige and pleasantness of three texts from a reckon writer that were presented as Human-, AI- and Human + AI-made. We discovered that the comprehension level emerges as a key, bidirectional modulator of evaluative judgments. Indeed, we observed that only participants that resulted in a low level of text comprehension showed a negative bias against AI-labelled texts compared to Human- and Human + AI-labelled ones, while those that demonstrated high comprehension showed a positive bias towards AI.

Our results suggest that bias against AI is not intrinsic to the content but is driven by preconceptions that can be mitigated or exacerbated by the level of understanding achieved. This work was supported by the “Inclusive Humanities” Project of Excellence (2023–2027) of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Verona funded by Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (MUR, Italy). Miriani contributed equally to this work.

Numero Cromatico, Art and Neuroscience Collective, P.le del Verano 93, 00185, Rome, Italy S. Torromino Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Verona, Lungadige Porta Vittoria 41, 37129, Verona, Italy Department of International Humanities and Social Sciences, UNINT, Via Cristoforo Colombo 200, 00147, Rome, Italy Department of Communication and Graphic Design, NABA, Via Ostiense, 92, 00154, Rome, Italy Department of Biology and Biotechnology “Charles Darwin”, Sapienza University of Rome, P.le Aldo Moro 5, 00185, Rome, Italy University of Naples Federico II, via di Porta di Massa 1, 80133, Naples, Italy Correspondence to D. The authors declare no competing interests.

We confirm that prior to data collection, all the research methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations of the Italian Law and also comply with the Helsinki Declaration. Ethical approval for this study was waived by the institutional committee of the University of Verona. All participants have obtained and signed written informed consent.

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