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A surprising new study shows that people are more likely to prefer content generated by AI over content written by a human.
Why we care. While AI cannot completely replace humans in content creation, generative AI can clearly create content that resonates with consumers.
Generative AI 6, humans 0. In six battles between AI and human-generated content, the generative AI version “won” each of them.
Here is an example of such a battle, where the task was to write an introduction for a blog post about the best cat food for indoor cats. AI won 54% to 46%:
In the other five battles, AI beat humans at writing social media ads (70% to 30% and 54% to 47%), writing a blog post paragraph (60% to 40%), writing a post on social media (65% to 35%), and writing a product description (65% to 35%).
But. While the research is interesting and surprising, it is important to note that while AI won favor in this study, it may not translate into actual performance (e.g. traffic, leads, revenue, rankings, engagement).
Methodology. The survey of 700 US consumers (50.2% male, 49.5% female) was included as part of a larger Semrush report called Think big with AI: transform content marketing for small businesses” (PDF download required). Age breakdown:
- 38% of respondents were 25-44 years old.
- 12% were 18-24 years old.
- 18% were 45-54.
- 32% were 55 years or older.
Semrush “worked with different writers” to create the human copy. To produce the AI content, Semrush used detailed prompts (e.g. guidelines on tone of voice, length, readability, objectives) and sometimes had to write two or three additional prompts to refine the end result.
Lesson learned. As Semrush wrote in the report:
- “These results show that AI-written content can be effective and resonate with your customers. If you use your AI tools well enough, you can create compelling and high-quality marketing copy.”
- “However, our experiment does not suggest that AI is sufficient for content writing.”
Why people probably preferred the AI-generated content:
- It got to the point quickly.
- It clearly emphasized the reader’s value propositions or concerns.
- It was easier to read and understand.
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