Semester 2, academic year 2024/2025
By Xiaoxiao Wang
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) enables AI agents to take on various communicative roles, including robot journalists, AI content writers, and virtual composers. Although previous research has provided valuable insights into public perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors toward AI in these domains, little is known about audiences’ perceptions of AI as an entertainment content creator, particularly in video production. This study examines whether AI-generated short entertainment videos elicit different levels of engagement, liking, and perceived credibility compared to human-created videos. Additionally, it explores whether these effects stem from the actual source of the video (AI vs. human) or the perceived source based on labeling. Building on Construal Level Theory (Trope & Liberman, 2010), this study further investigates whether psychological distance (high vs. low) in video content moderates audience responses to AI- vs. human-generated videos. A lab experiment is conducted to analyze these differences, employing computational decision-making models and linear mixed models. Accordingly, the study addresses the following research questions: To what extent do AI-generated entertainment videos elicit different levels of user engagement, liking, and perceived credibility compared to human-created entertainment videos? Does psychological distance (high vs. low) moderate how people engage with and evaluate AI- versus human-generated entertainment videos?