Author: Spearing, Emily R.; Gile, Constantina I.; Fogwill, Amy L.; Prike, Toby; Swire-Thompson, Briony; Lewandowsky, Stephan; Ecker, Ullrich K. H.
Description: Despite widespread concerns over AI-generated misinformation, its impact on people’s reasoning and the effectiveness of countermeasures remain unclear. This study examined whether a pre-emptive, source-focused inoculation–designed to lower trust in AI-generated information–could reduce its influence on reasoning. This approach was compared with a retroactive, content-focused debunking, as well as a simple disclaimer that AI-generated information may be misleading, as often seen on real-world platforms. Additionally, the extent to which trust in AI-generated information is malleable was also tested with an intervention designed to boost trust. Across two experiments (total N = 1223), a misleading AI-generated article influenced reasoning regardless of its alleged source (human or AI). In both experiments, the inoculation reduced general trust in AI-generated information, but did not significantly reduce the misleading article’s specific influence on reasoning. The additional trust-boosting and disclaimer interventions used in Experiment 1 also had no impact. By contrast, debunking of misinformation in Experiment 2 effectively reduced its impact, although only a combination of inoculation and debunking eliminated misinformation influence entirely. Findings demonstrate that generative AI can be a persuasive source of misinformation, potentially requiring multiple countermeasures to negate its effects.
Subject headings: Misinformation; Generative artificial intelligence; Source credibility; Continued influence effect; Artificial intelligence; AI; Cognition; Psychology
Publication year: 2025
Journal or book title: Royal Society Open Science
Volume: 12
Issue: 6
Pages: 242148
Find the full text: https://www.strategian.com/fulltext/Spearing2025.pdf
Find more like this one (cited by): https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=8746916794009813620&as_sdt=1000005&sciodt=0,16&hl=en
Serial number: 4081