AI can persuade people to take political actions.

AI can persuade people to sign petitions and donate money, with effects reaching up to 19.7 percentage points in large experiments involving 14,779 participants.

• Why it matters: Understanding AI's capacity to influence real-world actions is crucial because previous research mainly focused on attitudes, which may not accurately reflect actual behavior change, risking misjudging AI's societal impact.
• What they did: Researchers conducted two large preregistered experiments using conversational AI to persuade participants on various outcomes, including signing petitions and donating, and tested eight behavioral persuasion strategies.
• The result: AI persuasion produced sizable effects on behavior but showed no correlation with attitude changes, and information provision was less effective for behavioral outcomes, indicating that attitudinal effects may not predict real-world actions.