Threatened by AI: Analyzing Users’ Responses to the Introduction of AI in a Crowd-Sourcing Platform

As artificial intelligence (AI) solutions are being rapidly deployed, they increasingly compete with human labor. This study examines designers’ strategies in response to the threat from the introduction of an AI system for simple logo designs in a crowdsourcing design platform. We find that, although designers with lower abilities are more likely to exit the platform, designers with higher abilities move away from the locus of threat in the lower-tier contests and switch to more-complex design contests after the introduction of the AI system. More interestingly, we find that, although unsuccessful designers respond to the threat from AI by increasing their participation across multiple contests, successful designers become more focused (i.e., they substantially increase the number of submissions within a contest) and more quality oriented (i.e., they increase emotional content and complexity of their designs) after the AI launch. Our findings show how designers can learn from the behaviors of the more successful designers to differentiate themselves from AI systems by leveraging the more-abstract design attributes. Platform operators would benefit from adopting better segmentations strategies: with AI solutions for simple design tasks, hybrid AI + human solutions for less-complex design tasks, and skilled human designers competing primarily for the more-complex design tasks.