IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/judgdm/v21y2026ipe21_21.html

Bot or not: Can people tell the difference between stories written by a human or by an AI system?

Author

Listed:
  • Sears, Sydney
  • Weisberg, Deena Skolnick

Abstract

How do people perceive artificial intelligence (AI)-generated fictional stories? In Study 1, participants (1,682 adults recruited from Prolific) read either a human-written or AI-generated story. Half were told that their story was written by a human, and half were told that their story was written by ChatGPT. Participants rated the AI-generated story as higher quality and more absorbing, but they rated the story better on both measures when they were told it was written by a human. In Studies 2 and 3, participants (905 adults recruited from Prolific) read both types of story and guessed each story’s origins. Participants were no better than chance at differentiating between the human-written and AI-generated stories. Self-reported expertise with AI, but not with fictional literature, was positively correlated with correct story identification. AI programs thus can generate creative work that is viewed as being at least as good as human-generated work but are not perceived as being able to do so.

Suggested Citation

  • Sears, Sydney & Weisberg, Deena Skolnick, 2026. "Bot or not: Can people tell the difference between stories written by a human or by an AI system?," Judgment and Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21, pages 1-21, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:judgdm:v:21:y:2026:i::p:e21_21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1930297526100424/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:judgdm:v:21:y:2026:i::p:e21_21. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jdm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.