Swiss boffins admit to secretly posting AI-penned posts to Reddit in the name of science

Researchers from the University of Zurich secretly used semi-automated, AI-generated personas to post and argue on Reddit’s r/changemyview without disclosure, including sensitive false identities, prompting moderators to file a complaint and condemn the study as unethical. The university defended the work as low risk with valuable insights, while the draft paper claims LLMs can be highly persuasive; the incident has sparked debate over research ethics and the use of AI in online communities.