Research
Beyond 'Made with AI': Visualizing Provenance Density to Mitigate the Transparency Penalty
arXiv:2609.03460v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As generative AI makes polished prose cheap to produce, users can no longer rely on fluency as a proxy for truth. We call this failure mode the Fluency
arXiv:2609.03460v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As generative AI makes polished prose cheap to produce, users can no longer rely on fluency as a proxy for truth. We call this failure mode the Fluency Trap: users trust fluent hallucinations while also discounting accurate content once it is disclosed as AI-generated. Binary ``Made with AI'' labels respond with authorship disclosure, but they do not show what supports a claim. We propose Provenance Density, an evidence-visualization interface that shows the density of verified claims in a text. In a user study with 81 participants, an idealized Provenance Density interface produced a large discernment gap between truth and fabrication (+4.15 points, d=1.82), whereas participants given no signal showed no detectable discrimination. A technical audit with 200 samples shows that retrieval density alone is insufficient; unexpectedly, the Consistency Veto carries most of the discriminative signal on dynamic queries. As AI-generated content becomes indistinguishable from human writing, effective transparency must move from authorship disclosure toward evidence visualization.
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Source: arXiv cs.AI | 2026-09-04