However, the persuasive effectiveness significantly decreased when respondents perceived their video spokesperson as being AI-generated. Participants were not initially made aware that the spokesperson may be synthetic, and were only cued to the possibility in one of the last questions. When they perceived the spokesperson as being AI-generated, respondents on average found the pitch to be significantly less effective across all categories – memorable, understandable, and convincing, as well as in the composite overall effectiveness average (3.75 vs 3.47), which had a p-value well below the typical threshold (see Table 2). This complicates the findings on H1 and suggests that in some contexts, such as a small viewership number or a subpar avatar animating program, synthetic avatar videos may be negatively related to the persuasive force of the entrepreneur’s pitch, thus disproving H1.