The transparency dilemma: How AI disclosure erodes trust

As generative artificial intelligence (AI) has found its way into various work tasks, questions about whether its usage should be disclosed and the consequences of such disclosure have taken center stage in public and academic discourse on digital transparency. This article addresses this debate by asking: Does disclosing the usage of AI compromise trust in the user? We examine the impact of AI disclosure on trust across diverse tasks—from communications via analytics to artistry—and across individual actors such as supervisors, subordinates, professors, analysts, and creatives, as well as across organizational actors such as investment funds. Thirteen experiments consistently demonstrate that actors who…