(Illustration by Dung Hoang)
No one thinks that content creators posting on social media are speaking directly to them. But knowing that the creator used generative AI to make their video or image, rather than pouring their own effort into it, drives users to feel less of a connection with the creator, and to engage less with the post.
A new study finds that seeing an AI disclosure on a social post leads users to feel the creator spent less effort on making it, causing it to lose authenticity. The authors from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business—Stephan Carney and Ignacio Riveros, both doctoral students in marketing, and Stephanie M. Tully, associate professor of business administration—see implications for how influencers, brands, and social media platforms deal with the widespread and growing use of AI for post creation.
Social media creates parasocial connections, “one-sided emotional bonds between consumers and creators,” in which users feel a kind of attachment to the person creating the posts, the authors write. When users see an AI disclosure on a post, they take that to mean the creator didn’t work as hard on it, and they lose their appetite to engage with the video. But if they see an AI disclosure worded to indicate that the creator did put work into the post, the effect isn’t as strong, the researchers found.
The study evolved out of a broader question about how AI is changing consumer decision-making, Carney says. At first, the researchers started looking at whether people would feel more comfortable with a social media post knowing that AI had been used to make it.
They theorized that a more transparent approach would help, but instead they discovered that knowing that AI was involved in a post’s creation made users uninterested in it. “They’re not likely to engage with it or think that it’s good,” he says. This finding held regardless of the user’s age, so it wasn’t related to generational familiarity with the technology.
The question became: What causes this effect? It wasn’t because the quality of the content was lower when AI was used; in fact, both types of content had similar quality levels. It also wasn’t general distrust of AI or anger at being deceived by AI. Instead, the researchers found that AI use disrupted the attachment that users had to the creator of the content.
“This one-sided relationship is affected by how we feel about the person on the other end,” Carney says.
The researchers analyzed a million TikTok posts, looking at their engagement levels to find differences when creators noted that they had used AI. TikTok has required AI disclosures on posts since September 2023, when it became the first large social media company in the United States to do so. This created a natural experiment, allowing the researchers to compare engagement on the platform, which is popular with Gen Z and Gen Alpha users, both before and after the disclosure mandate went into effect.
They also conducted a series of controlled experiments that involved showing different posts with and without AI labels, and asking participants about how they felt about the post, the creator, and the AI disclosures. Among other measures, the studies looked at the distinction between a standard platform-wide disclosure and a specific creator-written disclosure that noted exactly which elements of the post had been made using AI.
The disclosure, the study found, sparks a negative feeling in users that persists. “In general, it’s reducing the likelihood that you’ll want to engage with that person’s content in the future, or that brand,” Carney says.
The study expands on existing work on AI and user behavior. “I found the paper especially compelling because it shows that an AI disclosure is not simply neutral metadata: It changes the story audiences tell themselves about the human behind the content,” says Martin Reimann, associate professor of marketing at the University of Arizona. He and his collaborator Oliver Schilke have studied how disclosing AI use impacts trust.
To Reimann, the study advances the field by showing that social media users’ behavior illustrates what AI disclosures cost society, and that users react more positively when shown more detailed disclosures that make clear how the creator used AI. If social media platforms required posts to carry labels saying how AI was used, rather than simply toggling a “made with AI” label, that would help avoid negative associations with the creator and their posts, Reimann says.
Find the full study: “Made With AI: Consumer Engagement with Social Media Containing AI Disclosures” by Stephan Carney, Ignacio Riveros, and Stephanie M. Tully, Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming.
Read more stories by Chana R. Schoenberger.