The Consequences of Generative AI for UGC and Online Community Engagement

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, such as ChatGPT and Midjourney, have recently revolutionized the way individuals create, share, and consume content across various domains. While these technologies hold the potential to democratize access to information and streamline content production, they also hold the potential to inadvertently undermine the health and sustainabilityofonlinecommunities,andtheopenexchangeofknowledgemoregenerally.Inthiswork,weinvestigatetheimpact of generative AI on user content production, considering the context of online Q&A at StackOverflow, attending to potential shifts in the demand for content (shifts in audience size, attention, and question volumes) that may be induced by ChatGPT, as well as shifts in the quality of answers users may produce (potentially with ChatGPTs assistance). Leveraging a rich dataset from StackOverflow spanning October of 2021 and March of 2023, we estimate that ChatGPT has led to a systematic decline in the demandforinformationatStackOverflow.Further,weestimatethatChatGPThasalsoledtoasystematicriseintheprevalenceof low-quality answers, as reflected by an increase in the rate with which answers are down-voted. Our work contributes to a recent, growing body of literature on the social and economic implications of AI and generative technologies. Further, our work sheds light on the potential challenges and opportunities that online communities may face in the coming months and years. More generally, our findings offer useful insights that may inform the operation and design of online communities going forward, and they bear implications for the open exchange of knowledge in society going forward.