Faces Merely Labelled as Artificial are Trusted Less

Artificial intelligence plays a crucial role on our daily lives. At the same time, artificial intelligence is often met with reluctance and distrust. Previous research demonstrated that faces that are visibly artificial are considered to be less trustworthy and remembered less accurately compared to natural faces. Current technology, however, enables the generation of artificial faces that are indistinguishable from natural faces. Accordingly, we tested whether natural faces that are merely labelled to be artificial are also trusted less. In three experiments (N = 399), we observed that natural faces merely labeled as being artificial were judged to be less trustworthy. This bias was robust and did not depend on the degree of trustworthiness and attractiveness of the faces, nor could it be modulated by changing raters’ attitude towards artificial intelligence. At the same time, we did not observe differences in recall performance. We conclude that understanding and changing social evaluations towards artificial intelligence goes beyond eliminating physical differences between artificial and natural entities.