PrivacyMedium
Reddit Moderators Report Unauthorized AI Study Involving Fabricated Identities by Purported University of Zurich Researchers
- Occurred
- Apr 26, 2025
- Published
- Apr 30, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
Researchers purportedly affiliated with the University of Zurich reportedly deployed undisclosed AI-generated comments on Reddit's r/ChangeMyView to study persuasion by allegedly fabricating identities such as sexual assault survivors and racial minorities. The experiment reportedly involved unauthorized demographic profiling, emotional manipulation, and violations of subreddit and platform rules. The researchers allegedly deviated from their approved protocol without renewed ethics oversight.
Developers
- Large language model developers
Deployers
- University of Zurich researchers
Harmed parties
- Reddit users on r/ChangeMyView subreddit
Tags
- Large language models
- Persuasion
- Psychological manipulation
- Undisclosed chatbot
- Privacy violation
- Deceptive practices
- Unauthorized human subjects research
- Research ethics breach
- Fabricated identities
- Impersonation
- Platform rules violation
- Community harm
- University of Zurich
Classification
Category confidence: 85%
Severity confidence: 80%
Rationale: Unauthorized data collection and identity fabrication violate user privacy and platform rules without ethical oversight.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8