Scientists from the private Bowdoin College (USA) have announced that modern society is ready to pay for content created by artificial intelligence (AI), reports The Conversation.

The experts tried to find out whether people are willing to consume and pay for literature written by AI. As part of the experiment, they asked OpenAI's ChatGPT-4 chatbot to create a short story in the style of the popular science fiction writer Jason Brown. Then, the organizers gathered 650 people, offering $3.50 to read and rate the story created by artificial intelligence. It is important to note that only half of the participants realized that the story was written by AI, while the other half were mistaken, believing that it was the work of Jason Brown.

After reading the story's first half, the participants were asked to evaluate the literary work; for example, whether they thought it was predictable, emotionally engaging, or evocative. They were also asked whether they would be willing to pay to read the second half of the story. It turned out that participants in the experiment who knew that AI wrote the story rated the work much more negatively, rating it more harshly on parameters such as predictability, validity, and memorability. However, about the same proportion of readers in each group said they would like to continue reading and were willing to pay.

"Our results challenge previous research that shows that people prefer works created by humans to works created by artificial intelligence," the scientists emphasized.

Experts also noted that content generated by AI may be in demand because its production is cheaper.