Bot or not: Can people tell the difference between stories written by a human or by an AI system?

How do people perceive AI-generated creative content? In Study 1, participants (1,498 adults recruited from Prolific) read either a human-written or AI-generated story. Half were told thattheir story was written by a human, and half were told that their story was written by ChatGPT. Participants rated the AI-generated story as higher quality and more absorbing, but they rated thestory better on both measures when they were told it was written by a human. In Studies 2 and 3, participants (905 adults recruited from Prolific) read both types of story and guessed each story’sorigins. Participants were no better than chance at differentiating between the human-written and AI-generated stories. Self-reported expertise with AI, but not with fictional literature, waspositively correlated with correct performance. AI programs thus can generate human-level creative work but are not perceived as being able to do so.