Giving AI a Human Touch: Highlighting Human Input Increases the Perceived Helpfulness of Advice from AI Coaches

How can we increase the acceptance of artificial intelligence (AI) coaching advice? Across five studies (N=3,780), we document that people perceive AI advice as more helpful if human input is (made) salient. Utilizing a naturalistic field setting, study 1 shows that the more students believe that an AI coach contains human input, the more helpful the advice is perceived to be. We find that highlighting human input as an intervention strategy increases the perceived helpfulness of AI advice in the context of photography, compared to various control conditions (study 2 and follow-up study in the appendix). Study 3 shows that the effect is mediated by an increased subjective understanding of AI feedback when human input is highlighted. Study 4 provides evidence through moderation and shows that the positive impact of highlighting human input disappears under low levels of subjective understanding.