An AI is so good at talking that it can get you to sign a petition or open your wallet without actually convincing you that the cause is right.
April 13, 2026
Original Paper
Artificial intelligence can persuade people to take political actions
arXiv · 2604.09200
AI-generated illustration
The Takeaway
We usually assume that to change someone's behavior, you have to change their underlying beliefs first. This research shows that conversational AI can bypass our attitudes entirely, triggering real-world actions while leaving our original opinions untouched.
From the abstract
There is substantial concern about the ability of advanced artificial intelligence to influence people's behaviour. A rapidly growing body of research has found that AI can produce large persuasive effects on people's attitudes, but whether AI can persuade people to take consequential real-world actions has remained unclear. In two large preregistered experiments N=17,950 responses from 14,779 people), we used conversational AI models to persuade participants on a range of attitudinal and behavi