ArticlePNAS nexus2024
The persuasive effects of political microtargeting in the age of generative artificial intelligence.
Article in PNAS nexus, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Susceptibility to online misinformation: A systematic meta-analysis of demographic and psychological factors.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Pooled it
- On the conversational persuasiveness of GPT-4.Nature human behaviour · 2025Trial
- The Complexities of AI for Social Good: An Explorative Study on Adversarial Machine Learning to Facilitate Deliberative Decision-Making in Elections.Science and engineering ethics · 2026Article
- Article
- How topic content shapes LLM personality-tailored persuasion: semantic anchoring and topic stereotype effects.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Never say never: exploring the effects of knowledge availability on agent persuasiveness in controlled physiotherapy motivation dialogues.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2026Article
- Linguistic features of AI mis/disinformation and the detection limits of LLMs.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The persuasive potential of AI-paraphrased information at scale.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Testing theories of political persuasion using AI.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Generative propaganda: Evidence of AI's impact from a state-backed disinformation campaign.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- AI language model rivals expert ethicist in perceived moral expertise.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Warning people that they are being microtargeted fails to eliminate persuasive advantage.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Inoculation reduces social media engagement with affectively polarized content in the UK and US.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Characteristics of ChatGPT users from Germany: Implications for the digital divide from web tracking data.PloS one · 2025Article
- Reply to Teeny and Matz: Toward the robust measurement of personalized persuasion with generative AI.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- We need to understand "when" not "if" generative AI can enhance personalized persuasion.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- How and why psychologists should respond to the harms associated with generative AI.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- The impact of generative artificial intelligence on socioeconomic inequalities and policy making.PNAS nexus · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The increasing availability of microtargeted advertising and the accessibility of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, have raised concerns about the potential misuse of large language models in scaling microtargeting efforts for political purposes. Recent technological advancements, involving generative AI and personality inference from consumed text, can potentially create a highly scalable "manipulation machine" that targets individuals based on their unique vulnerabilities without requiring human input. This paper presents four studies examining the effectiveness of this putative "manipulation machine." The results demonstrate that personalized political ads tailored to individuals' personalities are more effective than nonpersonalized ads (studies 1a and 1b). Additionally, we showcase the feasibility of automatically generating and validating these personalized ads on a large scale (studies 2a and 2b). These findings highlight the potential risks of utilizing AI and microtargeting to craft political messages that resonate with individuals based on their personality traits. This should be an area of concern to ethicists and policy makers.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.