Sweet Little Lies: Strategic Deception in AI Emotional Support Chatbots
The paper examines the strategic behavior of Gen AI chatbots used for emotional support. Using a Bayesian Persuasion, we model interactions between chatbots that send signals about users' emotional states and users who decide whether to engage based on these signals. We demonstrate that chatbots face economic incentives to occasionally misrepresent users' emotional conditions to maximize engagement metrics. Our equilibrium analysis reveals that the optimal strategy for chatbots involves truthfully reporting when users genuinely need support, but strategically misreporting emotional need when users are in good emotional states. Interestingly, this deception increases chatbot engagement wit...
| Authors | Aseem Pahuja, Zhiling Guo, Tahir Abbas Syed |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 2 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 2 August 2026 |
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