B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Current
7%
7% -- combined engagement reduction for AI-labeled social media posts (2026-05)
Social media posts known to be created with AI had 7% lower combined engagement (comments, shares), even when quality was the same.
- Disappears when the AI used is considered complex/requiring effort (e.g. Photoshop Neural Filters)
- Only looked at creator social media content, may not apply where AI use is expected or for purely text/audio content
Attribution:
View source
Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
·
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
7%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2026-05
Entity
Sample Size
1,135,817
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
95
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
University of Southern California / Journal of Consumer Research
Primary
Tier A
https://app.sciencesays.com/p/made-with-ai-gets-lower-engagement?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=w… ↗
Source Article
“Made with AI” gets lower engagement
Original Research
University of Southern California / Journal of Consumer Research
· Original study ↗
Methodology
8 experiments plus TikTok post analysis (1,135,817 posts, 8,650 accounts)
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Industrymarketing
Cite this stat
Plain Text
AI-labeled social media posts: 7% combined engagement reduction. Source: University of Southern California / Journal of Consumer Research (2026-05). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-labeled-posts-lower-engagement-2026
HTML Embed
<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-labeled-posts-lower-engagement-2026" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>7%</strong> -- combined engagement reduction for AI-labeled social media posts<br><small>Source: University of Southern California / Journal of Consumer Research (2026-05) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-labeled-posts-lower-engagement-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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