ArticleNature human behaviour2026
Introducing AI to an online petition platform changed outputs but not outcomes.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools into online platforms raises critical questions about their impact on content production and outcomes. We leverage a unique natural experiment on Change.org, a leading social advocacy platform, to causally investigate the effects of an in-platform 'write with AI' tool. To understand the impact of the AI integration, we collected 1.5 million petitions and used a difference-in-differences analysis. Here we show that, at a platform level, in-platform AI access substantially altered the lexical features of petitions and increased petition homogeneity but did not improve petition outcomes. We confirmed that the results were consistent in a separate analysis of repeat petition writers who wrote petitions before and after introduction of the AI tool. The results suggest that while AI writing tools can profoundly reshape online content, their practical utility for improving desired outcomes may be less beneficial than anticipated and introduce unintended consequences such as content homogenization.
Identifiers
42816553What OpenQuestion holds
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.