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 the potential impact of this use on users' 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 - and 13% of eligible UK voters - have used conversational AI to seek political information relevant to their electoral choice. Second, in a series of randomised controlled trials (N = 2,858 total) we find that across issues, models, and prompting strategies, conversations with AI increase political knowledge (increase belief in true information and decrease belief in misinformation) to the same extent as self-directed internet search. Taken together, our results suggest that although people in the UK are increasingly turning to conversational AI for information about politics, this shift may not lead to increased public belief in political misinformation.

翻译：对话式人工智能系统正日益取代传统搜索引擎，帮助用户完成信息检索任务。这在政治领域引发了担忧，因为带有偏见或虚构的输出可能误导选民或扭曲公众舆论。然而，尽管存在这些担忧，对话式人工智能在政治信息检索中的使用程度，以及这种使用对用户政治知识的潜在影响，仍然不确定。本文通过两项研究探讨这些问题：首先，在英国全国代表性调查（N = 2,499）中，我们发现2024年大选前一周，高达32%的聊天机器人用户（占英国合格选民的13%）曾使用对话式人工智能检索与其选举选择相关的政治信息。其次，在一系列随机对照试验（N = 2,858）中，我们发现跨议题、模型和提示策略，与人工智能的对话提升政治知识（增加真实信息信念、减少错误信息信念）的效果与自主互联网搜索相当。综合来看，我们的结果表明，尽管英国民众越来越多地转向对话式人工智能获取政治信息，但这种转变可能不会导致公众对政治错误信息的信任度增加。