{"id":1441,"date":"2026-07-23T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aiinstitute.hbs.edu\/future-proof-with-ai\/?p=1441"},"modified":"2026-07-20T15:34:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T15:34:52","slug":"cracking-ai-content-creation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aiinstitute.hbs.edu\/future-proof-with-ai\/cracking-ai-content-creation\/","title":{"rendered":"Cracking AI Content Creation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em>A large-scale study shows why perceived artificiality may be the new creative risk.<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019ve all become familiar with AI slop: low-quality content that is so obviously created by AI that we can\u2019t believe it could fool anyone. But more and more, we seem to be confronted with the unsettling possibility that we\u2019re not sure whether what we\u2019re looking at is AI-generated or not. That uncertainty is the starting point for \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5096969\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">AI in Disguise\u2014Quasi-Experimental Analysis of a Large-Scale Deployment of AI-Generated Ads<\/a>,\u201d co-written by HBS AI Institute Frontier Firm affiliate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hbs.edu\/faculty\/Pages\/profile.aspx?facId=1175206\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Shunyuan Zhang<\/a>. She and her co-authors asked what happens when AI-generated visual content enters a real advertising marketplace <em>without<\/em> being labeled as AI. Do people click less, or more? The result is more nuanced than either AI boosters or skeptics might expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Why This Matters<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>For advertisers, the research suggests treating perceived artificiality as a creative risk and avoiding visual cues that make an ad feel overly machine-made. The same logic applies across organizational functions. In customer service, AI responses may succeed or fail depending on whether customers experience them as natural rather than synthetic. In product design, teams should ask whether AI-generated concepts are realistic and actually useful, not just novel. For business leaders and executives, the takeaway is that AI value can depend on perception. Organizations that can build feedback loops to test how AI outputs are received, not just how cheaply they are produced, will be better positioned to turn AI into a source of strategic advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aiinstitute.hbs.edu\/cracking-ai-content-creation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Link to the HBS AI Institute Insight Article<\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5096969\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Link to the Research Paper<\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/aiinstitute.hbs.edu\/#join-our-community\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with HBS AI Institute news and research<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A large-scale study shows why perceived artificiality may be the new creative risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19452,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_trash_the_other_posts":false,"rkv_hide_featured_image":false,"rkv_hide_page_title":false,"rkv_hide_abstract_shapes":true,"rkv_reduce_header":false,"hbsd3_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/1210207891","hbsd3_featured_media_url_autoplay":false,"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"tax_cop":[],"rkv-people-shadow":[8],"insight_type":[],"class_list":["post-1441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - 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