Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences· 2026Q1
Estimating the threat of AI-agent responding across online survey platforms
- 1citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
AI agents pose as human survey-takers on online platforms, failing AI detection tests at rates from 6% to 41% across seven platforms, compared to a 2.4% false-positive rate for humans.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- AI agents can successfully impersonate human participants in online surveys.
- Validated AI detection tests effectively differentiate humans from AI agents.
- AI respondent rates varied widely across seven online survey platforms, from 6% to 41%.
- Human participants had a low false-positive rate of 2.4% on AI detection tests.
- Undetected AI agents can significantly impact online survey outcomes.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Recent research and advances in LLMs have led to widespread concern that AI agents could pose as human online survey-takers. However, it remains unclear how prevalent AI agents are on survey research platforms and how to effectively detect AI agents. We validated a series of AI detection tests that effectively separated verified-human participants from both prompted commercial and purpose-built AI agents. Using these tests, we collected surveys on seven online platforms and find wide variation in rates of respondents failing AI tests, ranging from 6 to 41% across platforms (compared to a 2.4% false-positive rate for in-person human participants). We further demonstrate that undetected AI agents can impact the results of online surveys. Our findings suggest that while there is an urgent need for AI detection tests and consistent, systematic monitoring of data quality on online platforms, some platforms currently appear to provide data with a low rate of AI agents.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Sociology and Political Science
Sociology and Political ScienceSocial Sciences