AI-generated responses are undermining crowdsourced research studies

Online questionnaires are being swamped by AI-generated responses – potentially polluting a vital data source for scientists. Platforms like Prolific pay participants small sums for answering questions posed by researchers. They are popular among academics as an easy way to gather participants for behavioural studies. Anne-Marie Nussberger and her colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, decided to investigate how often respondents use artificial intelligence after noticing examples in their own work. "The incidence rates that we were observing were really shocking," she says.