Will your AI turn backers away? Evidence from Kickstarter's AI-use disclosure policy

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping how creative work is produced, raising new questions about authenticity, originality, and human effort in entrepreneurial settings. We examine how platform-mandated AI-use disclosure is associated with crowdfunding outcomes, using Kickstarter’s 2023 disclosure policy and a dataset of over 63,000 campaigns launched between 2022 and 2024. Drawing on signaling theory, we argue that an AI-use label functions as a platform-governed cue that backers may interpret as signaling reduced human effort, potentially shaping how they evaluate creators and campaigns. Empirically, we find that AI-use disclosure is associated with a significantly lower likelihood of campaign success, with this negative association concentrated in reduced backer participation. The disclosure penalty is weaker when campaign descriptions are more subjective and easier to read, but stronger in technology-oriented campaigns where human expertise and originality are especially salient. It is also weaker for creators with stronger prior track records. Our findings identify AI-use disclosure as a novel platform-governed signal in crowdfunding, contribute to research on how platform-designed information environments shape user evaluations, and highlight potential unintended consequences of AI transparency requirements for platform design and policy.