Can AI change my mind without me noticing?
AI is very good at persuading people.
Think of the last time someone talked you round on something you felt strongly about.
They probably knew you a bit. They picked the arguments that would land with you.
AI can do that too, quickly and at enormous scale.
Researchers in Switzerland and Italy set up online debates on topics like "should students wear school uniforms?". People debated either another human or GPT-4.
Sometimes the debater was also given a few basic facts about their opponent: age, gender, education, politics.
GPT-4 with those facts had 81.7% higher odds of moving its opponent's opinion than a human debater did.
AI didn't need your life story. A handful of facts was enough.
In December 2025, a large study in Science looked at what makes conversational AI persuasive about politics.
Answers packed with facts and figures persuaded people the most. But the most persuasive set-ups were also the least accurate.
In 2025, researchers from the University of Zurich secretly posted AI-written comments on r/changemyview, a Reddit forum where people invite others to change their views.
The forum's users didn't know. When the moderators found out, they called it an unauthorised experiment, and it caused a big row about research ethics.
Some of the people arguing with you online may not be people.
On you: ads, political messages and sales chats written or tuned by AI, personalised to you.
For you: your own AI-written pitch, email or proposal may be more persuasive than it is accurate. The fluent version isn't always the true version.
Watch out for the very convincing answer. If you feel strongly persuaded, that's a good moment to check the claims (see "AI's sources need checking too").
Ask for the other side. "What's the best argument against what you just said?"
Be careful what you tell it about yourself when you're asking it to judge something contested. It will tend to tailor its answer to you.
Before you send your own persuasive text, check it for anything you couldn't defend.