This suggests that the “more human than human” phenomenon identified in Study 1 might be caused by participants’ more positive impressions of AI-generated poems compared to poems authored by human poets; when accounting for these qualitative judgments, the “more human than human” phenomenon disappears.

In summary, Study 2 finds that participants consistently rate AI-generated poetry more highly than the poetry of well-known human poets across a variety of factors. Regardless of a poem’s actual authorship, participants consistently rate poems more highly when told that a poem is written by a human poet, as compared to being told that a poem was generated by AI. The preference for AI-generated poetry at least partially explains the “more human than human” phenomenon found in Study 1: when controlling for participants’ ratings, AI-generated poems are no longer more likely to be judged human.