The Human Touch: Exploring Emotional Attachment Responses to Human and Artificial Intelligence (AI) -Generated Imagery
Files
Publication Date
Summer 2024
Digital Publisher
Digital Commons at St. Mary's University
Description
The recent advancement in artificial intelligence (AI) powers numerous image generation tools for various purposes, including marketing. In this article, we are particularly exploring human’s emotional attachment towards human-generated images compared to AI-generated images. From the literature, we found that the mirror neuron network could play a major role in why humans have a stronger connection to human-generated images than AI-generated images. The effect of seeing oneself in an image and being able to relate can enhance the emotional interaction with the image whereas with AI-generated images we see a decrease. Finding a slight decrease in emotional attachment to AI-generated images in contrast to human-generated images often fails to evoke the same connection due to the lack of human elements. However, the reaction to AI-generated images can vary widely due to circumstance. In each case, any diminished emotional response to AI-generated images leads to lower purchase intent, since emotional attachment is a key driver in consumer decision-making. Therefore, by understanding the psychological reasoning of how consumers perceive images in advertising, marketers are better equipped to handle AI-image generation and advertising. As the world progresses, the need to have proficient knowledge of the usage of AI in marketing allows us to get ahead of the AI trend and refine target markets with the scope of AI and AI-image generation.
Disciplines
Other Computer Engineering
Keywords
Advertising; Artificial Intelligence (AI); AI-generated Images; Consumers; Emotional Attachment; Mirror Neurons; Purchase Intent; Human-generated Images
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Collection
McNair Scholars Symposium
Format
Mp4
Medium
video
Size or Duration
17 minutes, 29 seconds
City
San Antonio, Texas
