Whether summaries, social media captions, infographics, image editing, slogans, or prompts for reflection—the digital world is now filled with AI. To prevent deception and to ensure transparency about the origin of content, a labelling obligation for content intended for the public will apply from this summer.
“However, after just one week, significant false memories already occur regarding which ideas and texts were generated by AI and which were created by oneself,” says Tim Zindulka, doctoral researcher at the University of Bayreuth’s Mobile Intelligent User Interfaces research group and leading author of the study.
A total of 184 study participants developed texts either with or without the assistance of AI. After one week, they were asked about how the ideas and the final texts had been produced.
“Workflows in which human and artificial intelligence were combined were particularly prone to errors—that is, when the idea came from AI but the formulation was done by the human, and vice versa,” explains Professor Dr. Daniel Buschek, Chair of Mobile Intelligent User Interfaces at the University of Bayreuth. After seven days, the probability of correctly recalling the attribute “AI-generated” falls to 37.7% when an AI-generated idea is formulated by a human. Conversely, there is a 64% chance of correctly identifying one’s own idea after a week if the final wording was produced by AI.
“Our study shows that retrospective questioning about how content was created does not lead to realistic results. As individuals using AI, people may come to adopt AI-generated ideas as their own, or conversely underestimate their own capabilities because they mistakenly recall a self-generated idea as AI-generated,” says Zindulka. He adds: “These findings should also be considered in the design of AI systems and in guidelines for AI labelling. For example, in a university context, it is unrealistic to expect students to retrospectively disclose details of AI use in coursework based on memory alone. Instead, it is more effective to document the process of content creation from the outset.”
The study was conducted in collaboration with Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; project number 525037874).
