Subscribe
The latest psychology and neuroscience discoveries.
My Account
  • Mental Health
  • Social Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Psychopharmacology
  • Neuroscience
  • About
No Result
View All Result
PsyPost
PsyPost
No Result
View All Result
Home Exclusive Artificial Intelligence

Eye-tracking study uncovers an implicit bias toward AI art — even when people cannot identify it

by Vladimir Hedrih
February 3, 2024
in Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science
(Photo credit: Adobe Stock)

(Photo credit: Adobe Stock)

Share on TwitterShare on Facebook
Stay informed on the latest psychology and neuroscience research—follow PsyPost on LinkedIn for daily updates and insights.

A study in Japan found that individuals tend to look longer at paintings when they believe that they were made by humans compared to paintings they believe were AI-generated. There were, however, no differences in subjective evaluations of AI-generated and human-made paintings on average. The paper was published in Perception.

Recent years have witnessed a surge in the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) tools across various domains previously thought to be exclusive to human expertise. The AI revolution, as some refer to it, is led by generative AI models. Generative AI models are a class of artificial intelligence tools designed to create new content, whether that be text, images, music, or other forms of media, based on the patterns and information they have learned from their training data. The most popular generative AI tools currently include OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E, Google’s BERT, Bard, and LaMDA, NVIDIA’s StyleGAN, Facebook’s BlenderBot, and others.

One type of generative AI models that are gaining particular popularity are those that generate pictures from textual prompts. AI models that create pictures like OpenAI’s DALL-E, Google’s Imagen, Midjourney, or Stable Diffusion are used by more and more individuals for generating pictures of all kinds. This rapidly increasing popularity of AI art has also fostered an interest in studying people’s attitudes towards it. In general, previous studies indicate that people often have difficulty recognizing AI art, but tend to perceive the AI-generated artwork as worse than human-made art.

Study authors Yizhen Zhou and Hideaki Kawabata wanted to further explore the negative bias toward AI art. They were particularly interested in finding out whether there is an implicit bias towards it. These authors conducted a study in which they tracked how much time people spend looking at AI- and human-made art, but also how they subjectively evaluate it i.e., how they see its beauty, emotional valence, emotional arousal, familiarity, concreteness, and how much they like it.

The study involved 34 undergraduate students from universities in the greater Tokyo area, all of whom lacked experience in art criticism. The group had an average age of 21 years, and 22 were women.

Utilizing 20 landscape paintings from the Vienna Art Picture System dataset and 20 AI-generated paintings created with Disco Diffusion, the research involved three tasks. Initially, participants viewed a series of paintings (both human-made and AI-generated) displayed on a screen for 20 seconds each, followed by a 1-second blank screen, while their eye movements were tracked. Subsequently, they rated each painting on various scales, such as beauty, and attempted to identify whether the artworks were human or AI-created.

Results showed that there was no difference in the average time participants spent looking at AI-generated pictures and at human-created ones — total fixation times, as detected by the eye tracker, were the same for the two types of pictures in the free-viewing tasks. The same was the case for the number of fixations (the number of times eyes looked at a specific place in the picture) and the average duration of a fixation.

In a similar fashion, there were no differences in any of the subjective evaluations between human-made and AI-generated pictures. However, when participants were asked to classify the paintings into AI-made and human-made, they spent more time looking at pictures that they considered to be human-made.

Participants classified 68% of human-made paintings correctly (i.e., classified them as human-made). However, they correctly classified only 43% of AI-generated images.

“Our results indicate an implicit bias toward AI art. Although participants were unable to identify whether the paintings were made by AI and evaluated human- and AI-made paintings equivalently in terms of perceived aesthetic values, they spent more time viewing the paintings they categorized as human-made than AI-generated. This finding suggests that a negative bias toward AI art can be reflected at an implicit level. Although AI is now capable of performing creative tasks typically undertaken by humans, artistic creativity is still considered a human-exclusive ability,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on the way people perceive AI-made artwork. However, the study used a limited set of pictures, all representing landscapes. Additionally, study participants were a small group of Japanese students. Studies using different types of pictures and larger and more diverse groups of participants might not yield equal results.

The paper, “Eyes can tell: Assessment of implicit attitudes toward AI art”, was authored by Yizhen Zhou, Hideaki Kawabata.

TweetSendScanShareSendPin1ShareShareShareShareShare

RELATED

The fading affect bias impacts most memories — but election-related memories are surprisingly resilient
Memory

Scientists shed light on how forgiveness does and doesn’t reshape memories

June 20, 2025

A new study suggests that forgiving someone does not make us forget what they did—but it does change how we feel about it. People who forgave recalled past wrongs with just as much detail, but with less emotional pain.

Read moreDetails
Generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT can act as an “emotional sanctuary” for mental health
Artificial Intelligence

Do AI tools undermine our sense of creativity? New study says yes

June 19, 2025

A new study published in The Journal of Creative Behavior offers insight into how people think about their own creativity when working with artificial intelligence.

Read moreDetails
Tree-covered neighborhoods linked to lower ADHD risk in children
Cognitive Science

Scientists demonstrate superior cognitive benefits of outdoor vs indoor physical activity

June 18, 2025

A new study suggests that where kids exercise matters: children who played basketball outside showed sharper thinking and faster reaction times than when playing indoors, hinting at a powerful brain-boosting synergy between physical activity and nature.

Read moreDetails
Scientists uncover biological pathway that could revolutionize anxiety treatment
Cognitive Science

Different parts of the same neuron learn in different ways, study finds

June 16, 2025

Researchers have discovered that apical and basal dendrites of the same neuron use different strategies to learn, suggesting neurons adapt more flexibly than previously thought. The findings help explain how the brain fine-tunes its wiring during learning.

Read moreDetails
Dark personality traits and specific humor styles are linked to online trolling, study finds
Artificial Intelligence

Memes can serve as strong indicators of coming mass violence

June 15, 2025

A new study finds that surges in visual propaganda—like memes and doctored images—often precede political violence. By combining AI with expert analysis, researchers tracked manipulated content leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, revealing early warning signs of instability.

Read moreDetails
Teen depression tied to balance of adaptive and maladaptive emotional strategies, study finds
Artificial Intelligence

Sleep problems top list of predictors for teen mental illness, AI-powered study finds

June 15, 2025

A new study using data from over 11,000 adolescents found that sleep disturbances were the most powerful predictor of future mental health problems—more so than trauma or family history. AI models based on questionnaires outperformed those using brain scans.

Read moreDetails
Poor sleep may shrink brain regions vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease, study suggests
Memory

Neuroscientists discover biological mechanism that helps the brain ignore irrelevant information

June 14, 2025

New research suggests the brain uses a learning rule at inhibitory synapses to block out distractions during memory replay. This process enables the hippocampus to prioritize useful patterns over random noise, helping build more generalizable and reliable memories.

Read moreDetails
New research links certain types of narcissism to anti-immigrant attitudes
Artificial Intelligence

Fears about AI push workers to embrace creativity over coding, new research suggests

June 13, 2025

A new study shows that when workers feel threatened by artificial intelligence, they tend to highlight creativity—rather than technical or social skills—in job applications and education choices. The research suggests people see creativity as a uniquely human skill machines can’t replace.

Read moreDetails

SUBSCRIBE

Go Ad-Free! Click here to subscribe to PsyPost and support independent science journalism!

STAY CONNECTED

LATEST

Believing “news will find me” is linked to sharing fake news, study finds

A common parasite not only invades the brain — it can also decapitate human sperm

Almost all unmarried pregant women say that the fetus resembles the father, study finds

New neuroscience research reveals brain antioxidant deficit in depression

Scientists uncover kidney-to-brain route for Parkinson’s-related protein spread

Scientists reveal a surprising link between depression and microbes in your mouth

New study sheds light on the psychological roots of collective violence

Experienced FPS gamers show faster, more efficient eye movements during aiming tasks, study finds

         
       
  • Contact us
  • Privacy policy
  • Terms and Conditions
[Do not sell my information]

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist

Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Cognitive Science Research
  • Mental Health Research
  • Social Psychology Research
  • Drug Research
  • Relationship Research
  • About PsyPost
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy