Research Highlights

## When Adding is Subtracting: How Content Creators on Digital Platforms React to Generative AI Tools

— August 12, 2026

![Professors Runshan Fu and Anindya Ghose headshots](/sites/default/files/styles/246w/public/2026-08/fu_ghose.png?itok=5h5GjVej)

**Overview:** In the paper titled, “[Generative AI, Platform Stances, and Content Creator Behavior](https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/isre.2025.2155),” NYU Stern Professors [Runshan Fu](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/runshan-fu) and [Anindya Ghose](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/anindya-ghose) along with Stern PhD student Hongxian Huang examine how content creators react to visual arts platforms’ policies on AI-generated images and tools.

**Why Study This Now:** While generative AI (genAI) may provide an abundance of opportunities for content creators, from automating routine parts of the creative process to lowering technical barriers of creation, it also poses substantive challenges to the creator economy, including questions around intellectual property rights and the potential displacement of creators. In response, visual arts platforms have adopted AI-related policies and de facto “stances” ranging from pro-AI to anti-AI. It is vital to understand how creators react to these stances both for monitoring and maintaining user engagement, and also because genAI technologies rely on continual human-created content for training purposes.

**What the Authors Found:** The researchers analyzed creator behavior after two platforms launched opposing genAI policies, with one introducing an AI image generator tool (a pro-AI stance), and the other announcing that all AI-generated artwork would be prohibited (an anti-AI stance). They found:

- Creators decreased their activity on the pro-AI platform after its AI tool was launched
- Creators increased their activity on the anti-AI platform after its AI prohibition
- Creators were most concerned about replacement risk, perceived low quality of work, and copyright infringement

**What Does This** ***Change*****:** Platforms can use these findings to better inform their AI-related policy decisions and communications and ensure their strategic choices are consistent with creator interests. The policy implication of this paper is that AI governance is also human-capital governance. How platforms introduce AI and what they communicate about authorship, training data, attribution, compensation, and the role of human creators, can influence whether content creators and contributors stay, leave, or disengage.

**Key insight:** “There is a much broader issue here than digital platforms,” explain the authors. “Across nearly every industry, companies will soon have to decide how AI and human contributors coexist in the same ecosystem and each choice signals to people how much their own skills and contributions will be valued. This influences their behavior and, in turn, shapes the ecosystems.”

This research was published in the [*Information Systems Research*](https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/isre.2025.2155).

## Related News

- [The AI Advertising Paradox](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/ai-advertising-paradox)
- [Zillow’s Zestimate: Does AI Help or Hurt the Housing Market?](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/zillows-zestimate-does-ai-help-or-hurt-housing-market)
- [Only One Left at this Price! The Effects of Nudging on Consumer Behavior](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/only-one-left-price-effects-nudging-consumer-behavior)
- [The Interplay Between Online Reviews and Physician Demand](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/interplay-between-online-reviews-and-physician-demand)
- [Fighting for the Greater Good: New Research Shows Democrats and Republicans are Willing to Trade Personal Smartphone Data to Combat COVID-19](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/fighting-greater-good-new-research-shows-democrats-and-republicans-are-willing-trade-personal)