AI voices reduce cognitive activity? A psychophysiological study of the media effect of AI and human newscasts in Chinese journalism

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been widely utilized in automated journalism writing and broadcasting in recent years. However, few systematic studies have been conducted on the differences in brain activation between human and artificial voices in newscasts. This paper aims to investigate the psychophysiological effects of the media in Chinese contexts when different agents (AI or human) broadcast different types (emotional/neutral) of news. Comparing the electrophysiological data of the participants’ EEG while listening to different newscast agents revealed that brain activity responses were greater when listening to a human newscast than to an AI voice newscast. And β bands in left posterior temporal lobe were significantly different, suggesting that participants’ brain were better at processing, comprehending auditory information, and storing working memory when listening to a human reporter than when listening to a voice generated by AI. Moreover, the ERP results and the interaction effect of content valence and agent voice demonstrated that the human voice generated greater cognitive effect, which may reflect participants’ trust in the credibility and fluency of the human voice news. This study demonstrates the importance of further research into cognitive effects of AI journalism.