A group of researchers, claiming to be from the University of Zurich, is under fire after conducting months of “unauthorized” experiment using AI-generated comments on unsuspecting Reddit users in the Change My View (CMV) subreddit (r/ChangeMyView).
The project, aimed at studying the persuasive power of large language models (LLMs), was revealed by the subreddit’s moderators of the CMV community over the weekend, who were notified by the researchers after they completed their research.
Subsequently, the moderators published a public notice on the subreddit, accompanied by a draft of the completed research paper, condemning it as a “psychological manipulation” of unsuspecting users.
What is r/Changemyview?
For those unaware, r/changemyview, one of Reddit’s most popular subreddit with 3.8 million members, allows participants to discuss various topics, including politics, media, and popular culture, to understand opposing viewpoints.
Further, users share personal opinions in posts, while others respond in an effort to influence them to reconsider their stance. If a commenter succeeds in changing the original user’s point of view, they are awarded a delta symbol (?) as a mark of changed perspective.
According to the moderators, the researchers utilized AI to create thousands of personalized comments to user posts, often impersonating sensitive identities such as sexual assault survivors, trauma counsellors, and critics of Black Lives Matter.
These AI personas were created using personal information inferred from users’ Reddit histories, including gender, age, ethnicity, location, and political orientation, without their knowledge or consent.
The moderators stated that the project violated subreddit rules, including a strict ban on undisclosed AI content and the use of bots. Several comments created by the research team have since been deleted for violating the site’s Terms of Service, but some of them can still be viewed in an archive created by 404 Media.
“CMV rules do not allow the use of undisclosed AI generated content or bots on our sub. The researchers did not contact us ahead of the study and if they had, we would have declined. We have requested an apology from the researchers and asked that this research not be published, among other complaints. As discussed below, our concerns have not been substantively addressed by the University of Zurich or the researchers,” the post added.
Following the disclosure of the research, the r/chnagemyview moderators filed an ethics complaint with the University of Zurich and urged the researchers not to publish their findings.
Reddit In the Picture
Reddit’s legal team has also reacted strongly and is formally contacting both the University of Zurich and the specific research team involved, demanding accountability or corrective action.
Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee described the experiment as “deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level” and a violation of Reddit’s site-wide rules.
He announced that all accounts tied to the University of Zurich research effort had been banned. Lee further emphasized the platform’s commitment to protect its users and working with moderators to remove any remaining AI-generated content.
Researchers Defend their Experiment
In its defence, the researchers claimed that their experiment had been approved by their university’s ethics committee and could help online communities protect against malicious AI misuse. Although they acknowledged community concerns, the researchers argued that the benefits of understanding LLMs’ persuasive power overshadowed the dangers of their unauthorized experiment.
However, the r/changemyview moderators rejected this justification, emphasizing that prior research, including by OpenAI researchers, has studied the subreddit “without experimenting on non-consenting human subjects.”
“People do not come here to discuss their views with AI or to be experimented upon,” the moderators emphasized in a public post. People who visit our sub deserve a space free from this type of intrusion.”
The University of Zurich has yet to respond publicly to the controversy.
