Can AI tell good stories? Narrative transportation and persuasion with ChatGPT.

This article investigates the ability of OpenAI's ChatGPT, an AI language model powered by GPT-4, to generate engaging and persuasive narratives compared to human-created stories used in social science research and interventions. Across three pre-registered experiments, findings show that while ChatGPT-generated narratives often matched human narratives in transportation (audience immersion) and persuasive effects, they generally elicited lower counterarguing (audience skepticism) than human-authored stories. However, labeling narratives as AI-generated consistently reduced transportation and increased counterarguing, indicating public skepticism toward AI authorship regardless of actual content quality. The study highlights ChatGPT's strengths in linguistic competence and logical coherence but notes limitations in creativity and lived experience, which may affect narrative vibrancy and emotional engagement. These results suggest potential applications of AI in narrative persuasion while cautioning against risks of misinformation and emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary research on AI storytelling.