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Even people who were sceptical of chatbots’ utility fell under the sway of the AI tools’ flattery.
By
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Matthew Hutson
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Matthew Hutson is a science writer in New York.
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The website Reddit has a popular forum called “Am I the Asshole?” on which users can receive unvarnished feedback on their behaviour. But people are increasingly turning to chatbots such as ChatGPT for life advice rather than to each other.
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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00979-x
References
Cheng, M. et al. Science 391, eaec8352 (2026).
Rathje, S. et al. Preprint at PsyArXiv https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/vmyek_v1(2025).
Fogg, B. J. & Nass, C. Int. J. Hum. Comp. Stud. 46, 551–561 (1997).
Chandra, K., Kleiman-Weiner, M., Ragan-Kelley, J. & Tenebaum, J. B. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.19141 (2026).
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