![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SEI_262222264.jpg\")
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Some people who take part in online research projects are using AI to save time<\/p>\n
Daniele D\u2019Andreti\/Unsplash<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Online questionnaires are being swamped by AI-generated responses \u2013 potentially polluting a vital data source for scientists.<\/p>\n
Platforms like Prolific pay participants small sums for answering questions posed by researchers. They are popular among academics as an easy way to gather participants for behavioural studies.<\/p>\n
Anne-Marie Nussberger<\/a> and her colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, decided to investigate how often respondents use artificial intelligence after noticing examples in their own work. \u201cThe incidence rates that we were observing were really shocking,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n They found that 45 per cent of participants who were asked a single open-ended question on Prolific copied and pasted content into the box \u2013 an indication, they believe, that people were putting the question to an AI chatbot to save time.<\/p>\n Further investigation of the contents of the responses suggested more obvious tells of AI use, such as \u201coverly verbose\u201d or \u201cdistinctly non-human\u201d language. \u201cFrom the data that we collected at the beginning of this year, it seems that a substantial proportion of studies is contaminated,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n In a subsequent study using Prolific, the researchers added traps designed to snare those using chatbots. Two reCAPTCHAs \u2013 small, pattern-based tests designed to distinguish humans from bots \u2013 caught out 0.2 per cent of participants. A more advanced reCAPTCHA, which used information about users\u2019 past activity as well as current behaviour, weeded out another 2.7 per cent of participants. A question in text that was invisible to humans but readable to bots asking them to include the word \u201chazelnut\u201d in their response, captured another 1.6 per cent, while preventing any copying and pasting identified another 4.7 per cent of people.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we need to do is not distrust online research completely, but to respond and react,\u201d says Nussberger. That is the responsibility of researchers, who should treat answers with more suspicion and take countermeasures to stop AI-enabled behaviour, she says. \u201cBut really importantly, I also think that a lot of responsibility is on the platforms. They need to respond and take this problem very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n Prolific didn\u2019t respond to New Scientist\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe integrity of online behavioural research was already being challenged by participants of survey sites misrepresenting themselves or using bots to gain cash or vouchers, let alone the validity of remote self-reported responses to understand complex human psychology and behaviour,\u201d says Matt Hodgkinson<\/a>, a freelance consultant in research ethics. \u201cResearchers either need to collectively work out ways to remotely verify human involvement or return to the old-fashioned approach of face-to-face contact.\u201d<\/p>\n Topics:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some people who take part in online research projects are using AI to save time Daniele D\u2019Andreti\/Unsplash Online…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-78668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}