According to a surprising new study, humans tend to prefer AI-generated content over human-written content.
why do we care? While AI cannot fully replace humans in content creation, it is clear that generative AI can create content that resonates with consumers.
Generation AI 6, Human 0. In each of the six AI vs. human-generated content battles, the generated AI version “won.”
This is an example of one such battle. In this case, I was tasked with writing an introduction for a blog post about the best cat food for indoor cats. AI won 54% to 46%.
The remaining five battles include creating social media ads (70% vs. 30%, 54% vs. 47%), writing blog post paragraphs (60% vs. 40%), and writing social media posts (65% vs. 54%), AI beat humans. 35%), and creating product descriptions (65% to 35%).
but. While this study is interesting and surprising, be aware that although AI wins in this study in terms of priorities, it may not reflect in your actual performance (traffic, leads, revenue, rankings, engagement, etc.) It is important to do so.
methodology. This survey of 700 U.S. consumers (50.2% men, 49.5% women) is included as part of a larger Semrush report called “Think Big with AI: Transforming Small Business Content Marketing” (PDF download required). Age breakdown:
- 38% of respondents were between 25 and 44 years old.
- 12% were between 18 and 24 years old.
- 18% were between 45 and 54 years old.
- 32% were over 55 years old.
Semlash “worked with several authors” to create copies of humans. To create AI content, Semrush uses detailed prompts (guidelines on tone of voice, length, readability, purpose, etc.) and then uses two or three prompts to adjust the final result. Sometimes we needed to create additional prompts.
Lessons learned. Semlash wrote in his report:
- “These results show that content created by AI is effective and has the potential to resonate with customers. You can make a copy.”
- “However, our experiment does not suggest that AI is sufficient for content creation.”
Why people are more likely to prefer AI-generated content:
- I got straight to the point.
- You clearly highlighted your value proposition and reader concerns.
- Now easier to read and understand.
