What happened

University of Zurich researchers conducted an unauthorised experiment on Reddit’s r/changemyview, a subreddit devoted to civil debate and changing minds, to measure how effectively AI could change people’s opinions in real-world online discussions.

The researchers deployed AI-driven bots to post 1,783 comments under fake personas - including sensitive identities such as rape survivors and trauma counselors - without disclosing their artificial nature to users or moderators.

The bots crafted highly personalised, persuasive arguments by scraping and analysing users’ Reddit histories to infer details like political orientation, gender, age, and ethnicity. 

As a result, many Redditors said they felt manioulated, violated and distrustful.

Why it happened

The Zurich team justified their actions by arguing that the societal importance of understanding AI’s persuasive capabilities outweighed the risks, especially since such technologies could be exploited at scale by malicious actors for more harmful purposes (eg. electoral manipulation). 

However, the researchers’ methods - particularly the lack of consent, impersonation of sensitive identities, and mining of personal data - were not covered by their university’s original ethics approval and violated subreddit rules against bots and undisclosed AI content.