Short Wave
Short Wave
NPR
Can you spot AI-written stories? Listen and find out
12 minutes Posted Aug 12, 2026 at 7:00 am.
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Can you tell the difference between a human-written short story and an AI-generated one? Most people can’t. In a series of experiments led by a team at Villanova University, researchers found two things: First, most people said they preferred human written stories, but couldn’t tell the difference between AI and human writing; and second, when presented with two similar short stories, one written by a human and one generated by AI, readers tended to prefer the AI-generated piece – especially if they had been told the AI story was written by a human.

We excerpted two of the short stories on our website for you to guess which is AI-generated and which is human-generated.

Check out the full set of stories here.

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