Expectation Shapes Neural Preparation for AI-generated and Real Image Processing: Evidence from EEG

Abstract

AbstractAI-generated images, videos, and news have become an inseparable part of daily life, leading to increasing skepticism toward online information. Understanding how expectations about the presence of AI-generated content influence perception is crucial for elucidating the underlying neural mechanisms and facilitating the generation of naturalistic avatars. In this study, we analyzed an existing EEG dataset (N = 29) in which participants viewed emotional facial photographs of only real individuals while being informed that upcoming faces were either real ("REAL") or AI-generated ("FAKE"). We examined pre-stimulus oscillatory activities in the one-second EEG interval before stimulus onset and found significantly lower alpha power when participants expected "FAKE" compared to "REAL" faces. This effect was region-specific, particularly in right occipito-parietal and temporo-parietal regions, as identified by both sensor- and source- level analyses. In addition, the modulation effect between pre-stimulus alpha activity and post-stimulus event-related potentials (ERPs) was measured. A significant correlation between changes in late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes and pre-stimulus alpha power was observed exclusively for "FAKE" smiling faces, consistent with our previous findings. These results suggest that AI-related expectations modulate neural preparatory states, with lower alpha activity presumably reflecting increased attentional demands for stimuli believed to be artificially generated. This study demonstrates that top-down beliefs systematically shape both pre- and post-stimulus neural dynamics, providing new insights into how cognitive expectations bias perceptual processing, with implications for understanding human-AI interaction and improving the design and evaluation of AI- generated content in real-world contexts.