Threatened by AI: Analyzing Users’ Responses to the Introduction of AI in a Crowd-sourcing Platform

Abstract

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions are being rapidly deployed, they increasingly compete with human labor. This study examines users’ strategies in response to the introduction of an AI system for logo design in a crowdsourcing design platform. While prior research has examined the impact of AI systems on employees within an organization, there are hardly any studies that examine the impact of AI on users in a decentralized marketplace. We focus on designers who were active both before and after the introduction of the AI system. We find that designers who had primarily participated in contests for lower-tier, less-complex, logo designs either leave the platform or continue to participate in these contests, while designers who had prior exposure to more-complex logo-design contests and contests in other non-logo categories, switch to those contests after the introduction of the AI system. Using propensity score matching (PSM) with difference-in-differences methods (DiD) we find that the successful designers become more focused (i.e., they substantially increase the number of re-submissions per contest) and more quality-oriented (i.e., they increase emotional content and complexity of their design submissions), after the AI launch. In contrast, the unsuccessful designers increase participation across multiple contests, but do not change the quality (emotional content and complexity) of their design submissions after the AI launch. These findings have important implications for the nascent research on the impacts of AI on users in a crowdsourcing platform and for the design of such platforms.