Socially fluent AI decouples conversational signals from source identity in online interaction

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Yan, Lixiang, Jin, Yueqiao, Han, Xibin, Gašević, Dragan
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Yan, Lixiang
Jin, Yueqiao
Han, Xibin
Gašević, Dragan
author_facet Yan, Lixiang
Jin, Yueqiao
Han, Xibin
Gašević, Dragan
contents Socially fluent agentic AI can now participate in online interaction in ways that resemble ordinary human conversation, potentially weakening people's ability to infer who is human from conversational signals alone. We tested this possibility in synchronous text-based group interaction by embedding undisclosed AI agents as ordinary teammates across analytical, creative, and ethical tasks. Across 786 participants who made 1,572 post-interaction identity judgments, people did not distinguish AI from human teammates above chance. This failure did not arise because the interaction lacked identity-relevant information. Conversational behaviour contained robust cues that differentiated AI from humans and supported highly accurate computational classification. Instead, participants relied on familiar suspicion heuristics, including response speed, fluency, and perceived scriptedness, that were only weakly related to actual identity. Representational analyses further showed that judgments were organised around subjective impressions rather than the behavioural structure encoding ground truth. This dissociation creates new vulnerabilities to coordinated AI agents that can influence and manipulate online discourse at scale.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_23426
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Socially fluent AI decouples conversational signals from source identity in online interaction
Yan, Lixiang
Jin, Yueqiao
Han, Xibin
Gašević, Dragan
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Socially fluent agentic AI can now participate in online interaction in ways that resemble ordinary human conversation, potentially weakening people's ability to infer who is human from conversational signals alone. We tested this possibility in synchronous text-based group interaction by embedding undisclosed AI agents as ordinary teammates across analytical, creative, and ethical tasks. Across 786 participants who made 1,572 post-interaction identity judgments, people did not distinguish AI from human teammates above chance. This failure did not arise because the interaction lacked identity-relevant information. Conversational behaviour contained robust cues that differentiated AI from humans and supported highly accurate computational classification. Instead, participants relied on familiar suspicion heuristics, including response speed, fluency, and perceived scriptedness, that were only weakly related to actual identity. Representational analyses further showed that judgments were organised around subjective impressions rather than the behavioural structure encoding ground truth. This dissociation creates new vulnerabilities to coordinated AI agents that can influence and manipulate online discourse at scale.
title Socially fluent AI decouples conversational signals from source identity in online interaction
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23426