{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,27]],"date-time":"2026-10-27T16:33:25Z","timestamp":1793118805430,"version":"4.5.0"},"reference-count":47,"publisher":"Oxford University Press (OUP)","issue":"10","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,30]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:p>Conversational AI systems are increasingly being used in place of traditional search engines to help users complete information-seeking tasks. This has raised concerns in the political domain, where biased or hallucinated outputs could misinform voters or distort public opinion. However, in spite of these concerns, the extent to which conversational AI is used for political information-seeking, as well as the potential impact of this use on users\u2019 political knowledge, remains uncertain. Here, we address these questions: First, in a representative national survey of the UK public (n = 2,499), we find that in the week before the 2024 election, as many as 32% of chatbot users\u2014and 13% of eligible UK voters\u2014have used conversational AI to seek political information relevant to their electoral choice. Second, in a series of randomized controlled trials (n = 2,858 total), we find that across issues, models, and prompting strategies, task-directed conversations with AI to research-specific political topics increase political knowledge (increase belief in true information and decrease belief in misinformation) to the same extent as self-directed Google search. Taken together, our results suggest that people in the United Kingdom are increasingly turning to conversational AI for information about politics. These findings substantially extend prior work by demonstrating that conversational AI's effects on political knowledge generalize across multiple topics, political perspectives, and model families, suggesting that the shift toward AI-assisted political information-seeking may not lead to increased public belief in political misinformation.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/pnasnexus\/pgag305","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,6]],"date-time":"2026-10-06T12:01:27Z","timestamp":1791288087000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Conversational AI increases political knowledge as effectively as self-directed internet search"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"5","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9370-9606","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Lennart","family":"Luettgau","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"UK AI Security Institute , Aldwych House 71-91 Aldwych, London WC2B 4HN ,","place":["United Kingdom"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Hannah Rose","family":"Kirk","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"UK AI Security Institute , Aldwych House 71-91 Aldwych, London WC2B 4HN ,","place":["United Kingdom"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Kobi","family":"Hackenburg","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"UK AI Security Institute , Aldwych House 71-91 Aldwych, London WC2B 4HN ,","place":["United Kingdom"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jessica","family":"Bergs","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"UK AI Security Institute , Aldwych House 71-91 Aldwych, London WC2B 4HN ,","place":["United Kingdom"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Henry","family":"Davidson","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"UK AI Security Institute , Aldwych House 71-91 Aldwych, London WC2B 4HN ,","place":["United Kingdom"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Henry","family":"Ogden","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AI Policy Directorate , 100 Parliament Street, London SW1A 2BQ ,","place":["United Kingdom"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Divya","family":"Siddarth","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Collective Intelligence Project , 31 Slave Hill, Aylesbury HP17 8AY ,","place":["United Kingdom"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Saffron","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Anthropic , 548 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94104 ,","place":["USA"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Christopher","family":"Summerfield","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"UK AI Security Institute , Aldwych House 71-91 Aldwych, London WC2B 4HN ,","place":["United Kingdom"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,6]]},"reference":[{"key":"2026102712065052000_pgag305-B1","author":"Anthropic","year":"2024"},{"key":"2026102712065052000_pgag305-B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","author":"Summerfield","year":"2024","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2409.06729"},{"key":"2026102712065052000_pgag305-B3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"63","DOI":"10.2307\/2944882","article-title":"Shortcuts versus encyclopedias: information and voting behavior in California insurance reform elections","volume":"88","author":"Lupia","year":"1994","journal-title":"Am Polit Sci Rev"},{"key":"2026102712065052000_pgag305-B4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"194","DOI":"10.2307\/2111700","article-title":"Uninformed votes: information effects in presidential elections","volume":"40","author":"Bartels","year":"1996","journal-title":"Am J Pol Sci"},{"key":"2026102712065052000_pgag305-B5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"790","DOI":"10.1111\/0022-3816.00033","article-title":"Misinformation and the currency of democratic citizenship","volume":"62","author":"Kuklinski","year":"2000","journal-title":"J Polit"},{"key":"2026102712065052000_pgag305-B6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"303","DOI":"10.1007\/s11109-010-9112-2","article-title":"When corrections fail: the persistence of political misperceptions","volume":"32","author":"Nyhan","year":"2010","journal-title":"Polit Behav"},{"key":"2026102712065052000_pgag305-B7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1497","DOI":"10.1017\/S0007123418000327","article-title":"Does counter-attitudinal information cause backlash? 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