HUMAN VS AI ON TIKTOK: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGAGEMENT IN BECOOL’S CAMPAIGN

Abstract

This study aims to examine whether there is a significant difference in audience engagement between manually produced and AI-generated videos in Becool’s TikTok branding campaign. Using a quantitative comparative design, we analyzed 20 purposively selected posts ten human-made and ten AI-generated, uploaded during the third quarter of 2025. Secondary data from TikTok Analytics included likes, comments, shares, views, and engagement rate. Assumptions of normality (Shapiro–Wilk, p > 0.05) and homogeneity (Levene's, p = 0.005) were verified before conducting an independent-samples t-test. There wasn't a statistically significant difference between the two groups with respect to engagement rate, t (14.325) = 1.024, p = 0.323, such that both manual and AI-produced content triggered the same audience responses. The findings outline the potential that AI-produced videos can be equaled with human-produced videos provided that platform and audience assumptions about relevance and authenticity are fulfilled. In practice, marketers can integrate the use of AI tools within the ideate, edit, and scale stages with human curation to ensure narrative cohesion as well as depth of emotions within the development of the content.