Reddit has revealed that researchers from the University of Zurich secretly ran an AI experiment on its r/changemyview community and it’s raising big ethical questions.
The researchers posted over 1,700 comments using AI chatbots pretending to be real people, including trauma survivors and counselors.
Another AI system scanned users’ past posts to guess their age, gender, and political views—so the bots could craft targeted replies.
The results (not yet peer-reviewed) showed that these personalized AI comments were six times more convincing than the average human reply. That’s a huge leap in how AI can shape online conversations.
Reddit responds:
Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer called the experiment “deeply wrong” and announced legal action. The University of Zurich has paused the release of the study and started an internal investigation.
Final thoughts:
This isn’t just about one experiment. it shows how AI could quietly influence opinions online at scale. If fake accounts can be this convincing, the future of online debate and trust is at serious risk.