Trust in AI grows - but its humanization is rejected

According to the report, 83 percent of respondents can imagine communicating with artificial intelligence. This corresponds to an increase of 25 percentage points within one year. In 2018, 58 percent of Germans could still imagine such communication in principle.

The respondents could conceivably consume automatically generated short messages such as weather reports (63 percent) and traffic news (51 percent). Listening to AI-generated music is an option for 34 percent, and reading an AI-generated book is conceivable for 30 percent. By contrast, respondents are more skeptical about political reports generated automatically. Only 13 percent would want to consume such news.

The labeling of AI texts is also controversial: Although 29 percent of Germans are not at all interested in whether an AI was involved in the creation process of media, 77 percent would like AI applications to remain recognizable as such. Only ten percent of respondents, on the other hand, are in favor of humanizing AIs.

It is also becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between texts written automatically and those written by humans, as many AI texts can already be read as if they had been written by humans. For example, only 24 percent of respondents believe they can tell the difference between a text written by an AI and one written by a human. Another 50 percent don't know if they could tell the difference. And indeed, only 39 percent were able to identify the correct AI text in the test.

The credibility of automatically generated texts also leads to uncertainty among German citizens: While 43 percent consider AI news to be credible, 57 percent have doubts. The respondents seem to be less afraid of the AI itself than of the programmers behind it: 54 percent fear that developers could misuse AI for their own agenda. A further 62 percent do not like the fact that an artificial intelligence cannot be held responsible for content.

In summary, the study shows that the acceptance of artificial intelligence has increased significantly within a year. Here, short messages such as weather reports or traffic information turn out to be popular, imaginable AI formats. At the same time, most Germans would like to see clear guidelines for dealing with artificial intelligence and appropriate guidance when it is used. Because although they would like automatically generated articles to remain identifiable as such, AI texts are no longer so easily recognized.