AI can lift the output and hollow the experience — a study measures both

A pre-registered study of 225 students ran a creative writing task with and without ChatGPT and measured two things at once: the quality of the output and the felt experience of making it. The gap between them is the finding worth keeping. The assisted group wrote more fluent, more varied pieces with less effort — and reported significantly less enjoyment and less perceived value in the work. The product went up; the sense of authorship went down.

• The assistance is real, and it is largest for non-native speakers, who could finally put ideas into fluent form. Access widens.
• Declaring that AI was used raised how morally acceptable the work felt — most of all among people who had not used it. Transparency is not just compliance; it changes how the work is valued.

• The study names the cost precisely: bypassing the effort erodes the motivation to engage — the very engagement that carries the deeper satisfaction. Full delegation won on output and lost on experience.
• One controlled study, one task. A related paper found collective originality narrowing where this one did not. Measure your own case before generalising.

Source: If ChatGPT can do it, where is my creativity?