Disclosing AI’s Involvement in Advertising to Consumers: A Task-Dependent Perspective
通过三项实验研究，探讨了披露AI参与广告投放与广告创作对消费者口碑意愿的影响，发现当消费者认为AI能完成高复杂度任务时，更愿意分享AI投放的广告而非AI创作的广告。
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the advertising industry is widespread, yet there is no consensus on whether consumers should be informed of AI’s involvement in ad placement and ad creation. In light of the importance of digital literacy, we believe that consumers have a right to know about the technology behind the ads they encounter and that scholars should lead the discussion on the issue of AI disclosure. To this end, we conducted three experimental studies to investigate how the disclosure of AI affects consumers’ word-of-mouth (WOM) intent in relation to ads. Our findings suggested that participants were more likely to share an ad placed by AI than an ad created by AI when they believed AI is capable of performing high-complexity tasks. This effect was mediated by the sequence from perceived task objectivity to machine heuristic. Our studies have important implications for both theory development and the practice of AI advertising.