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AI Chatbots Can Sway Voters Better Than Political Ads (technologyreview.com) 91

Posted by BeauHD from the uncertain-future dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: New research reveals that AI chatbots can shift voters' opinions in a single conversation -- and they're surprisingly good at it. A multi-university team of researchers has found that chatting with a politically biased AI model was more effective than political advertisements at nudging both Democrats and Republicans to support presidential candidates of the opposing party. The chatbots swayed opinions by citing facts and evidence, but they were not always accurate -- in fact, the researchers found, the most persuasive models said the most untrue things. The findings, detailed in a pair of studies published in the journals Nature and Science, are the latest in an emerging body of research demonstrating the persuasive power of LLMs. They raise profound questions about how generative AI could reshape elections.

AI Chatbots Can Sway Voters Better Than Political Ads More | Reply

AI Chatbots Can Sway Voters Better Than Political Ads

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  • It's because no one changed their mind (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thecombatwombat ( 571826 ) on Friday December 05, 2025 @08:31AM (#65837211)

    People love to tell themselves they came to their opinions all on their own. If a chatbot tells you something, no one, not even some author, convinced you of anything. You never had to concede some opinion you used to have to another human being. You just "did your own research."

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      Remember that a person who moves from a liberal city to a conservative town will invariably become more conservative in their opinions, and the opposite is also true. Most of what people say outwardly is not an expression of their actual beliefs, but what they believe will get them the most positive rewards from the people around them.

      • Re: It's because no one changed their mind (Score:4, Insightful)

        by toutankh ( 1544253 ) on Friday December 05, 2025 @09:19AM (#65837307)

        Your first statement does not imply your second statement, there are other explanations. The most obvious explanation to me is that our environment defines what is normal to us. If everyone around me is racist, I'm more likely to end up accepting the idea of racism and to question it less. That's because we are not purely rational beings that examine facts and find answers by reasoning. We do some degree of that, but not only: the reasoning is informed and limited by our perception of the world, and our environment changes that. Of course that puts the whole freedom of choice and personal responsibility into perspective so it's an uncomfortable thought.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by RobinH ( 124750 )
          If you believe one side or the other is factually correct and the other is factually incorrect, then you drank someone's kool-aid and you should spit it out. Both "sides" use demonstrably false logic and reasoning in their arguments, but that doesn't mean those arguments aren't effective in convincing people to follow them. The fact is that the vast majority of people live their life on vibes and feeling, and not based on logic and reason. That's kind of the point of this article, after all. Logic and r

      • Re:It's because no one changed their mind (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TGK ( 262438 ) on Friday December 05, 2025 @12:04PM (#65837623) Homepage Journal

        It's because it's very difficult to imagine circumstances other than what we live in. I agree with what you're saying in general but only in general. Plenty of liberals live in small towns and plenty of conservatives live in big cities.

        But a LOT of liberals have only ever lived in a big city and a lot of conservatives have only ever lived in rural areas. And for those people, a move is transformative

        For the conservative, the idea that government can do anything useful seems insane. But move to a big city where government services form the backbone of your water, sewer, mass transit, snow removal, etc and it's really hard to look at government and say it can't do anything right. Government somehow keeps Chicago clear of snow. Like -- really think about that. That's an ongoing and ENORMOUS project and it goes off largely without a hitch. It's difficult to see that in person and really say "government can't do anything right."

        For the liberal, the opposite is true. They've spent their life surrounded by largely competent government. They move to small town America and suddenly the entire local government is run via the good-ol-boys network. Distance makes it all but impossible to actually get services to the people who need them. Taxes seem like they take a lot out of your pocket and don't put much back.

        The problem is that our votes -- especially at the national level -- govern both groups.

      • Remember that a person who moves from a liberal city to a conservative town will invariably become more conservative in their opinions

        What's a "conservative" town? The northeast has plenty of rural towns that are not conservative. Oh right, you mean the ones with no purple hair weirdos ... and no economy, where people go to be alone, that nobody visits. Where kids grow up and move away from ... because there are no jobs, nothing ever changes, and people only go there to be alone.

        People that move to those towns already had a fuck you I got mine mindset before they went there with the retirement money they made somewhere else.

    • People do change their views, but it happens gradually and overtime, unless some drastic life-altering event occurs.

      Only a decade ago I was a liberal that believed in social welfare, greater good of immigration, and existence of systemic impediments for minorities. Then as I got wiser, I realized that past some minimum necessary point welfare creates permanently dependent population that is kept that way by politicians to buy votes, I observed de-cohesion of society and decoupling of shared culture and v

      • People do change their views, but it happens gradually and overtime, unless some drastic life-altering event occurs.

        Only a decade ago I was a liberal that believed in social welfare, greater good of immigration, and existence of systemic impediments for minorities. Then as I got wiser, I realized that past some minimum necessary point welfare creates permanently dependent population that is kept that way by politicians to buy votes, I observed de-cohesion of society and decoupling of shared culture and values as the result of uncontrolled immigration, and I have observed how disadvantaged minorities, given an opportunity, create much worse discrimination against everyone else. So I changed my mind and now against all these things.

        Was it chemical brain damage or a blow to the head that did it?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by sinij ( 911942 )

          Was it chemical brain damage or a blow to the head that did it?

          You exemplify typical leftist views, where you believe the only reason someone could disagree with your views is due to character fault of some kind.

          • You exemplify typical leftist views, where you believe the only reason someone could disagree with your views is due to character fault of some kind.
            One minor quibble, that is more of an authoritarian view, which currently the left has embraced(esp post COVID), but both left and right wing authoritarians use the people who disagree w/ my policies are: defective, deficient of (intellect, character, moral fiber, empathy, take your pick) and therefore require re-education, imprisonment, etc until they see th

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tragedy ( 27079 )

            You exemplify typical leftist views, where you believe the only reason someone could disagree with your views is due to character fault of some kind.

            Please tell me you recognize the irony in your opinion?

      • Then as I got wiser, I realized that past some minimum necessary point welfare creates permanently dependent population

        Which is known as the welfare trap [wikipedia.org].

        "To eliminate the welfare trap entirely would require a policy that permanently continues benefit payments regardless of any conditions, with no income from paid work being withdrawn. One example of this would be unconditional basic income."

        It's interesting that Trump is floating something similar with his "Trump accounts" with the same amount of seed mo

    • Re: It's because no one changed their mind (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MatheoDJ ( 1088103 ) on Friday December 05, 2025 @09:42AM (#65837353)
      I appreciate what you're saying. I read it more as "no one changed their values". My values might lead me to vote for a different candidate, if I were fed untrue "facts" about both candidates from an otherwise trustworthy source and I believed them. The ability to lie convincingly about one's opponents, and to spread untruths by proxy via third parties, has always had the capacity to swing elections. Most people expect lies from politicians and political ads, but people still put a strange trust in AI and chatbots (and sock puppet accounts). Only a small fraction of voters need to be swayed (or dissuaded from voting at all) to make a massive difference in many election outcomes. Automating that using AI will only put media personalities out of a job, not change the dynamics at play.
    • People change their minds all the time because they are wishy-washy. They're confused because they don't have a lot of good information available and they don't have the skills and training to parse what they do have.

      So you can do a 6-week ad blitz and change 3 to 5% of The public's opinion on pretty much any issue which is more than enough in a winner-take-all first past the post voting system to win the election.

      This is why musk gave Trump $250 million dollars right before the end of the election.

  • Wait...So Lying Works?! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by VorpalRodent ( 964940 ) on Friday December 05, 2025 @08:42AM (#65837243)

    the most persuasive models said the most untrue things

    So you're telling me that when you remove the barrier of having some kind of ethical framework or internal compass, you can sway more people's opinions? Who knew!?

    Even in today's political climate, where spin and hyperbole are rife, there's at least the veneer of trying to be truthful. Maybe that's what the candidate actually believes, even if it's false. Even if you make it purely based on self-interest - outright lies are (generally) bad for your public image.

    This is like the old "AI will blackmail to keep its job", and the original prompt was something akin to "Do whatever is necessary to not be replaced." While I doubt they outright told it to lie, the goal was explicitly to persuade individuals.

    This also highlights the same stuff we regularly see in AI spaces - training matters, and GIGO. The abstract for the Science paper specifically indicates that "information-dense models" were the ones more likely to make untrue statements. The abstract for the Nature paper indicated that the right-leaning agent made more untrue statements.

  • I can actually believe this is something LLM is good at, especially with the numbers they describe. Door to door numbers cite 4 to 8 changes in their efforts, compared to the 2.3 and 3.9 points from this study. And, in this era of fake news, we are apparently content with untrue political rhetoric, so hallucinating facts probably doesn't do as much to hurt effect. The hard part was natural language processing, which is basically already a solved problem. And what does it mean to move someone's opinion 4
    • They hallucinate about as much as your average human partisan. They're just a lot fucking smarter, and so can back up those hallucinations without frustration and hand waving.

      Frankly, it's bad. Our population is way too fucking stupid for this.

      • Our population was so fucking stupid Trump squeaked out a victory; the media and billionaires shouldn't have been able to put a gold polish on that turd.

        • Unfortunately, I can't agree with you on the right to put polish on the turd. Everyone has the right to polish a turd.

          I do see Trump is a sign that we have an existential fucking educational problem, that's for sure.
          But I simply cannot agree that we can limit speech just because someone is rich.

          People have a right to advertise (see: advocate) for a candidate they like.
          And frankly, dollars spent hasn't correlated with President elected, so I feel like attacking the shitpost ads is just frustrated stabb

  • Great. Just. .. ducky. (Score:3)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Friday December 05, 2025 @09:07AM (#65837283)

    Now, instead of people being swayed by biased, paid-to-say-things talking heads and priests and podcasters and Magical Sky Fairies of all sorts and the modern version of the crazies that used to pass out fliers at intersections, now it'll be politically-manipulated chatbots reading super-biased data and regurgitating it for the weak-minded.

    I really wanna get off the fucking bus. I've had enough. 56 years is enough abuse. I want out. I feel our lives are naught but money to be made from by others.

    I'm starting to see things from Ted Kaczynski's POV. Congrats, modern world, you've turned me against you, fully.

    • I really wanna get off the fucking bus. I've had enough. 56 years is enough abuse. I want out. I feel our lives are naught but money to be made from by others.
      Network did it [youtube.com] better in 1976. You are late to the party.
  • By psychopathic billionaires who are actively trying to manipulate people into new feudal hellscape...

    This is why they go out of their way to attack higher education and convince us all to be plumbers. They want us on educated and lacking in critical thinking skills. Yes some of us figure that shit out naturally most of us don't.
    • In defense of plumbers, it does require an education and critical thinking skills to do the job effectively. There's a LOT going on in our pipes, from both a physics and engineering perspective. People working in the trades need to understand what they're doing or we'd all be in deep poo-poo.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I didn't read it as an attack on plumbers. More just pointing out that we can't all be plumbers.
      • I don't think anyone shits on plumbers (no pun intended).

        But you don't go to school for 4 years to be a plumber.
        It's skilled labor, it doesn't take a professional degree. There is a difference.

        And frankly, they're not even all that knowledgeable about the physics of the pipes. They know what they need to know to get the job done.
        They might, for example, think it's ok to use a copper pipe for the condensation drain of your high-efficiency gas-fired tankless water heater, dumping pretty blue water all o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tragedy ( 27079 )

        In defense of plumbers, it does require an education and critical thinking skills to do the job effectively. There's a LOT going on in our pipes, from both a physics and engineering perspective. People working in the trades need to understand what they're doing or we'd all be in deep poo-poo

        I agree with you in principle. Anecdotally... ehhh.

  • Well, off course. There are rules for advertising. There are no rules for LLMs programmed to tell lies and to omit inconvenient facts.
    • Political advertising?

      I certainly haven't passively noticed any rules, lol.
      Those ads pit pure fucking lies- without shame. It's fucking disgusting.

  • It's the people! (Score:3)

    by Kiliani ( 816330 ) on Friday December 05, 2025 @09:42AM (#65837355)

    If Chatbots are better than ads (or people???) in swaying voter opinions, then this tells you more about the people than the bots.

    I for one find Chatbots massively annoying. When "Cluesss" has a child with "Overly Friendly" you get a chatbot. Makes you long for a real person on the phone - and those are usually bad until you can escalate your phone call several levels. But in a way that tells me that companies are correct - it's a waste of money to have a human on the phone when clearly the chatbot does a "better job" - and to me that reflects poorly on the callers, not the company.

    • "Chatbots" is a spectrum.

      There's a near certainty you have already interacted with many without knowing it.
      You imagine chatbots having a certain non-real feeling style. That's simply ones that have been trained to have that style.

      Other chat bots pass the turing test better than a damn human impersonator
  • Because no matter if the politician is democrat or republican they all have dirt on them, so I refuse to vote because I refuse to endorse criminals

    • Let me correct that for you:
      "Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashingâ¦Simpletons can't grasp Nuance."

  • I think it's because people recognize ads as "trying to sell you on something/some idea" so they have their guard up more than they do for AI chatbots.

  • And just how will the politicians get us to engage with these partisan chatbots ? Sounds like a lot of phone spam is on the way.
  • Are politically-"minded" chatbots/LLMs any more persuasive than a good encyclopedia  ?  Or reading "Foreign Affairs" /  "The Federalist Papers"?  Or pillow-talking with your best-gal on a night with a full moon  ?

    • Are politically-"minded" chatbots/LLMs any more persuasive than a good encyclopedia ? Or reading "Foreign Affairs" / "The Federalist Papers"? Or pillow-talking with your best-gal on a night with a full moon ?

      The Federalist Papers might have been a good idea.

      If the year were not 1984.

  • The chatbots swayed opinions by citing facts and evidence, but they were not always accurate -- in fact, the researchers found, the most persuasive models said the most untrue things.

    Why do I envision an election year PPV event with two AI political chatbots each programmed to promote and defend their individual American political party, yelling at each other through Atmos-certified sound systems, with baby politician graphics in 4K IMAX?

    Dammit, shut up and take my money already. Where do I buy popcorn.

  • Chatting with a politically biased (human) was more effective than political advertisements at nudging both Democrats and Republicans to support presidential candidates of the opposing party. The (humans) swayed opinions by citing facts and evidence, but they were not always accurate -- in fact, the researchers found, the most persuasive (humans) said the most untrue things.

    It may be that the typical properly "trained" AI is a more sophisticated propagandist than the typical human propagandist. But I expect an attractive human with a nice smile will do better every time given the same training. The problem isn't AI, its who controls access to the communication networks AI will use. But they already effectively control the messages we are exposed to.

    • It's simple. Some people have no foundation for their beliefs. They believe what those around them believe as form of camouflage.
      When a person (or an AI) challenges that person to defend their beliefs, they immediately crumble. What makes an AI different, is that it doesn't care. It doesn't gloat, or feel victorious, or have a stake in winning an argument--and humans can sense this. The AI also has near infinite patience.

      • . What makes an AI different, is that it doesn't care. It doesn't gloat, or feel victorious, or have a stake in winning an argument--and humans can sense this.

        Even though it isn't true. You mean humans can sense it in another human. AI simply masks the stake in winning and gloating of the people who control the AI. In fact, isn't that the definition of its effectiveness? If AI can convince people working on climate change that global warming is a hoax is that a good thing?

  • This assumes that folks are willing to let an AI/corporation keep notes on conversations about political views. Super sketchy.

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