You probably wouldn’t notice if an AI chatbot slipped ads into its responses

People who interacted with different AI chatbots in a study didn’t realize the bots were including veiled advertising in their replies

By: Brian Jay Tang, University of Michigan and Kang G. Shin, University of Michigan, The Conversation

Outlets: The Conversation

Published: April 24, 2026

Words: 1,238

Last Updated: 3 months ago

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By Brian Jay Tang, University of Michigan and Kang G. Shin, University of Michigan

Hundreds of millions of people consult artificial intelligence chatbots on a daily basis for everything from product recommendations to romance, making them a tempting audience to target with potentially below-the-radar advertising. Indeed, our research suggests AI chatbots could easily be used for covert advertising to manipulate their human users.

We are computer scientists who have been tracking AI …

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