Public adoption of conversational AI for election-related political guidance

Determine whether people will turn to large language model-based conversational AI systems (such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini) for political guidance during national election periods despite low public trust in AI tools.

Background

The paper highlights widespread concerns that conversational AI might misinform voters or introduce bias during high-stakes political moments. Despite these concerns, surveys show low public trust in AI for sensitive tasks. Against this backdrop, the authors explicitly note uncertainty about whether people would actually use AI chatbots for political guidance during elections, motivating their subsequent empirical investigation.

References

First, it is unclear whether people trust AI enough to use it for political information-seeking in high-stakes political moments, such as in the lead-up to national elections. Given this, it is an open question whether people will turn to conversational AI for political guidance during elections, even when such tools are available.

— Conversational AI increases political knowledge as effectively as self-directed internet search (2509.05219 - Luettgau et al., 5 Sep 2025) in Introduction, paragraph 2