Technology

Identical text perceived as less credible when presented as a Wikipedia article than as simulated ChatGPT or Alexa output. The researchers note that these results might be influenced by the fact that it is easier to discern factual errors on a static text page like a Wikipedia than when listening to the spoken audio of Alexa or watching the streaming chat-like presentation of ChatGPT.

However, exploratory analyses yielded an interesting discrepancy between perceived information credibility when being exposed to actual information and global trustworthiness ratings regarding the three information search applications. Here, online encyclopedias were rated as most trustworthy, while no significant differences were observed between voice-based and dynamic text-based agents.

Contrary to our predictions, people felt higher enjoyment [measured using questions like "I found reading the information / listening to the information entertaining"] when information was presented as static or dynamic text compared to the voice-based agent, while the two text-based conditions did not significantly differ. In Experiment 2, we expected to replicate this pattern of results but found that people also felt higher enjoyment with the dynamic text-based agent than the static text.

Edit: Added "for credibility" to title