Perceptions of narratives by AI versus human authors

Authors/institution/venue: G. Raffloer and colleagues; Judgment and Decision Making, peer-reviewed paper originally published in 2025. Reporting status: renewed media coverage on 5 August 2026; not a newly published paper.

The experiments, involving reported samples of 1,682 and 905 participants, examined ratings of short stories written by people or generated by AI and the effect of source labels. AI stories were often rated higher, while disclosure affected perceptions. The result concerns selected short-form narratives and study conditions; it does not establish general literary superiority, professional acceptance or durable reader preference. Results are author-reported and were not independently reproduced for this briefing.

Practical significance: content teams should test audience response, provenance labelling and editorial quality separately. Sources: paper; one report. Credibility: Medium.