As AI-generated text continues to evolve, distinguishing it from human-authored content has become increasingly difficult. This study examined whether non-expert readers could reliably differentiate between AI-generated poems and those written by well-known human poets. We conducted two experiments with non-expert poetry readers and found that participants performed below chance levels in identifying AI-generated poems (46.6% accuracy, χ2(1, N = 16,340) = 75.13, p < 0.0001). Notably, participants were more likely to judge AI-generated poems as human-authored than actual human-authored poems (χ2(2, N = 16,340) = 247.04, p < 0.0001). We found that AI-generated poems were rated more favorably in qualities such as rhythm and beauty, and that this contributed to their mistaken identification as human-authored. Our findings suggest that participants employed shared yet flawed heuristics to differentiate AI from human poetry: the simplicity of AI-generated poems may be easier for non-experts to understand, leading them to prefer AI-generated poetry and misinterpret the complexity of human poems as incoherence generated by AI.
Exactly. And putting value into things just because they’re made by humans is a stupid idea.
Humans don’t exist on a separate plane, removed from everything natural and artificial. That’s hubris galore.
I understand what you mean, and also understand the nihilistic stance, however, the same way humans don’t exist in a separate plane, the selfception and empathy toward others (which is not unique to us) allows a more than zero sum interpretation of art. Naturally the technical part can be reproduced by machines but the metaphysical part cannot. What becomes interesting is the notion that the metaphysical can be created post-hoc, which puts us squarely in the same situation as other poster wrote by quoting the passage of “The man in the high castle”.
It’s maybe stupid for you, but clearly not for everyone. For example, an AI could create the History of a planet that we do not know it even exists; meanwhile, I won’t call stupid those people interested in reading that, but currently I’ll read the History of this planet written by humans, if asked. In a nutshell, my point is there is value either way, but poems written by machines? I will leave those to scientists and scholars, at least for now.