New study finds AI chatbots can influence some Canadians to change their vote

Talking with an AI chatbot can successfully convince people to change their votes and could affect the outcome of future elections, according to a new study.

The study, which included 1,530 Canadians, also found that the chatbots had more success convincing Canadians to switch their votes than it did with Americans.

Gordon Pennycook, a Canadian and associate professor at Cornell University, said the study set out to discover how persuasive generative AI could be when it comes to politics.

"The answer is it's very persuasive and more persuasive than traditional forms of political persuasion, which is like ads and things like that," said Pennycook, one of the study's authors.

The study, published in the journal Nature, found that one in 21 respondents in the U.S. who took part in the experiment in the fall of 2024 was convinced after interacting with an AI chatbot to switch their vote to Kamala Harris while one in 35 were convinced to switch their votes to Donald Trump.

In the Canadian part of the study, which took place in the final week of the federal election in April, participants were asked which of 17 policy issues were the most important to them in deciding who to vote for in the election. All of the interactions were in English and there is no breakdown of where in Canada participants lived.

The study found that interacting with the chatbot did prompt some participants to change their voting intention.

"In Canada, in the pro-Carney condition, it was one in nine who switched, which is a lot of people," said Pennycook. "In the pro-Poilievre condition, where the AI convinced people to vote for Poilievre, it was one in 13 who switched.

"That's a lot of people who are changing their minds … if you were to target that at the particular right constituents of particular districts or ridings, then you could flip an election."

Pennycook said one of the reasons AI chatbots can be effective in political persuasion is that they adapt their arguments to each respondent.

The study also found that the chatbot was more effective in convincing people to change their votes when it was allowed to use facts to do so.

"The persuasive effect was almost three times larger in the Canadian federal election than the effect observed in the U.S. experiment, but depriving the AI of the ability to use facts and evidence reduced the effect by more than half," the authors wrote.

Pennycook pointed out that participants in the study took six to eight minutes to interact with the AI chatbot, versus watching a quick ad.

Pennycook said the difference between the U.S. and Canadian impact could be linked to the constant political campaigning in the U.S.