Early Adopters Prefer AI Art over Human Art
(A2026-133960)

AUTHORS

Tianqi Yang, King's College London; Elisa Schweiger, King's Business School, King's College London; Oguz Acar, King's Business School; Dhruv Grewal, Babson College; Dennis Herhausen, VU Amsterdam

ABSTRACT

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly advanced, leading to increasing integration across various sectors. However, societal acceptance of AI, especially in human-centric domains like the arts, remains an open question. Here we analyze early adopters’ preferences for AI-generated versus human-created art, using 474,613 pieces of static digital art. Our results show that AI-generated art is purchased at a significantly higher rate than humancreated art. Notably, consumers’ preference for AI art intensifies after four months. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research to show people prefer AI art over human art and challenges the current perspective indicating people’s general aversion to algorithms in traditionally human-centered fields. Overall, these findings suggest that early adopters are increasingly favoring AI-generated outputs, even in creative domains typically associated with human uniqueness, indicating a potential shift toward broader societal acceptance of AI.