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Are you really brilliant, or is your AI chatbot just flattering you?

A girl uses her smartphone at home in Arizona on Friday, June 16, 2023. (Darryl Webb/AP)
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A girl uses her smartphone at home in Arizona on Friday, June 16, 2023. (Darryl Webb/AP)

With an increasing number of people turning to chatbots for advice, artificial intelligence researchers are saying you might want to take their flattery with a grain of salt.

While you might be beautiful, reasonable and always right, it turns out that chatbots are often telling us what we want to hear, instead of challenging what might be our flawed logic and inaccurate perceptions. Part of the problem is that the bots are using what we tell them to generate their answers, and then there’s the issue of flattery driving consumers back to the bots — a boon for the companies that create them.

Here & Now talks to AI researcher and New York Times writer Simar Bajaj. His latest article on AI is “The Next Time You Consult an AI Chatbot, Remember One Thing.”

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2025 WBUR

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