Respondents found the task less meaningful when they thought that the slogans were AI-generated (Figure 1). Compared to the human-label group, the AI-label group saw a drop in task meaning of about 0.07 standard deviations. Respondents in the AI-label condition were also less willing to contribute a slogan of their own by 3.4 percentage points. Because 26% of participants provided a slogan—and some were remarkably creative—the estimated effect is substantial: a 13% decrease relative to the baseline.
When people think AI did the creative work, task meaning and effort decline · Milena Nikolova, Viliana Milanova, and Feicheng Wang · 3 August 2026