Ginger Zhe Jin is currently the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. Most of her research focuses on information asymmetry among economic agents and how to provide information to overcome information problems. Her research has been published in leading economics, management, and marketing journals. Many of her works have been covered by major media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, and the Los Angeles Times. She is a managing editor of the International Journal of Industrial Organization, an advisory council member of the Journal of Industrial Economics, and a board member of the Industrial Organization Society. She has been a Research Associate of the NBER since 2012.
Abstract
Leveraging a universe of posts on a leading website that shares anime and manga style artworks, we study the impact of the launch of a major text-to-image generative AI tool in October 2022. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that the AI launch caused a significant drop in both creators’ productivity and viewer attention. Importantly, this effect is heterogeneous across creators. High-productivity and professional creators experience declines in both productivity and attention, while low-productivity creators gain more attention and productivity increases after the AI launch. We document two important underlying mechanisms. First, we demonstrate that creators working in areas more heavily invaded by AI experience larger drops in productivity and attention, suggesting that the degree of competition with AI plays an important role. Second, we show that creators whose content has a notable human touch benefit from AI launch, suggesting that the rise of AI content may increase viewer appreciation for human-created works.
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