Conversational AI increases political knowledge as effectively as self-directed internet search

Key Findings

• — Representative national survey (n = 2,499): in the week before the 2024 UK election, 32% of chatbot users, and 13% of eligible UK voters, had used conversational AI to seek political information relevant to their electoral choice.
• — Randomised controlled trials (n = 2,858 in total): task-directed conversations with AI about specific political topics increased political knowledge (higher belief in true information, lower belief in misinformation) to the same extent as self-directed Google search.
• — The effect generalised across multiple topics, political perspectives and model families; the authors conclude that the shift toward AI-assisted political information-seeking may not lead to increased public belief in political misinformation.

Methodology Notes

Survey plus RCTs on UK samples; effects are measured on knowledge of true and false claims, not on vote choice or attitudes. Published online 2026-10-06 (PubMed article date; Crossref created 2026-10-06) in PNAS Nexus volume 5 issue 10 (PMID 42840900); the arXiv preprint 2509.05219 was posted 2025-09-08. Verification route: PubMed record with the full abstract and AISI affiliations, the Crossref record and the AISI research page; the Oxford University Press article page blocks crawlers.

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