Creators quit pro-AI platforms

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Topic: AI | Social Media
For: B2C. Can be tested for B2B 
Research date: September 2026
Universities: New York University

📈 Recommendation

If you work in social media (e.g. influencer marketing), pay attention to the AI stance of the platforms you’re investing in. The platforms that are investing the most in AI (e.g. X, Quora) will likely see decreasing engagement from creators.

In the long term, focus on platforms with a balanced or anti-AI stance.

🎓 Findings

• Scientists analyzed over 1.5 million posts across two platforms with different AI policies and found that, on pro-AI platforms:

  • Engagement from creators significantly decreased

  • 75% of AI-related opinions shared by creators are negative (e.g. concerns about AI replacing human work with lower quality outputs, copyright infringements)

  • Of those opinions, only 7% relate to the AI feature itself, but roughly over 50% criticize the pro-AI stance of the platform

• The effect is:

  • Stronger among popular creators, and creators who have a following on other platforms

  • Stronger among creators with negative attitudes towards AI 

  • Weaker among creators who have been on the platform for longer

🧠 Why it works

• Creators see pro-AI policies as a threat to their artistic identity and diversity.

• They also see their work being used without consent to train AI systems.

• These make them less likely to engage as they fear their work might be misused and replaced by AI.

✋ Limitations

• The study looked at two platforms where engagement is driven by the content itself and the creator's personal brand is of secondary importance (e.g. Reddit). The effect might differ on platforms where the creator’s personal brand is more important (e.g. Instagram).

• Creators might be more willing to stay engaged on pro-AI platforms if the feature benefits them (e.g. AI suggesting viral content formats).

• The AI stances of the platforms studied were extreme, one actively invested in and promoted AI, while the other had a strict AI ban. Intermediate AI policies (e.g permissive with labeling, restrictive with AI training data) might have different effects.

👀 Real-life example

Most platforms are experimenting with AI features. TikTok Symphony Creative Studio is one of those, letting users create trending AI-generated content.

✅ Solution: AI features have the potential to disrupt engagement. Platforms might integrate AI differently to avoid this risk, for example:

• Avoiding AI content creation features. “Made with AI” content gets lower engagement, so AI might be better integrated into analytics or planning instead of the content itself.

• AI can be used to help creators reply to comments from their audiences at scale, with up to 43% higher future engagement, but only if it’s clear it’s an AI responding to the comments.

📖 Research

Huang, H., Fu, R., & Ghose, A. Generative AI, Platform Stances, and Content Creator Behavior. Information Systems Research (September 2026).

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

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