Cultural proximity bias in AI-acceptability : the importance of being human

Artificial intelligence (AI) can generate a greater number of recombinations of ideas than humans can, and hence AI-produced creative products could be seen as embodying more innovation and surprise which are worth higher economic value. Yet the lack of human emotionality embedded in an AI product deprives it of an essential ‘humanness’ to which people attach important cultural value. As the overall value of a product is a sum of its economic and cultural values, we assessed the demand differential and quality perception asymmetry of creative products, specifically music compositions, that have been created by humans and AI separately. We conducted a survey with a quasi-experimental design and found that respondents reveal lower valuations towards music generated by AI and will moderate their evaluations of quality away from AI- and towards human-generated compositions when the type of composer is known. The demand for creative goods is sensitive to consumers’ perceptions of cultural proximity to humanness that determine the acceptability of AI products.